SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
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User ID: 853
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
8mo ago
Paul's humanitarian preoccupations drain his will-to-power, whereas in Nietzsche's conception those things are overcome by the Ubermensch. Leto II becomes that ultra-aristocratic figure who transcends morals and directs the evolution of mankind at his will. Paul embodies the humanitarian Messiah, Leto II is the ultra-aristocratic God Emperor.
A film adaptation of Alia would be difficult. Casting children is difficult enough, casting a child who is supposed to behave like Alia at the age of 2 or 3 seems impossible. I'm sure they did some exploratory casting to see if they could make it work. They would either need to age her up or age her down, and I think it makes sense to do the latter and I'm sure we'll see her in the next movie.
Agree on the brutality of the Harkonnens being understated, "casually kills underlings" is a trope I find pretty boring, demonstrate their brutality in other ways!
Paul is not a failed Messiah, he's a failed Übermensch in the Nietzschean sense. There's an important distinction and I do think Herbert was influenced by Nietzsche.
Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions are a motif in theater going back to ancient Greece, i.e. per Wikipedia "the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make (Apollonian) order of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate, though he dies unfulfilled." You don't have to be schizo to see how this plays out in Dune. Paul's father Duke Leto is even named after the mother of Apollo. House Harkonnen is probably the single best scifi interpretation of the Dionysian out there.
And of course, Paul himself is related by blood to both houses.
CHOAM is barely in the movie, the resource-struggle takes a backseat to those themes.
Dune Part 2 was great (warning: spoilers) and thoughts on Dune universe
HBD nerds can be overly obsessed with SNPs and IQ distributions, blank slatists are blind to primordial truths of material reality, but the Dune universe properly understands Civilization as the volatile interaction between the gene pool and meme pool. I am happy to report that Dune Part II does justice to the book and is the best movie I've seen in theaters for as long as I can remember.
There is not much to complain about in terms of Wokeism. There was some bad casting in the first movie for characters that don't appear in this installment. Right Wing Twitter is complaining about the the love interest, Chani, being unattractive and the transition of her character to being a warrior who is skeptical of the cult percolating around Paul. This is probably the biggest change from the book, arguably necessary because Paul's internal conflict would be difficult to depict so it was written as an external conflict with his love interest.
The other complaint from the Christian nationalist side is that the movie and Dune universe are a critique of religiosity, which is only partially true. But in this case, the antagonists are godless heathens, and it's the victorious protagonist who is associated with religiosity, which is inverted from the traditional Hollywood critique of Christianity.
What Paul, the Fremen, the Empire, the Harkonens, etc. represent in terms of pattern-matching to reality or history is open to interpretation. I saw one right-winger on Twitter complain about the Dune universe as a celebration of the Islamic conquest of Western civilization. It's true the Fremen are aesthetically coded as Arabic, and Herbert actually does use the word "Jihad" in the book to denote the cults and its conquests across the universe, for example Paul "thought then of the Jihad, of the gene mingling across parsecs..."
But Paul is an avatar of all Abrahamic religion: he's the synthesis of Moses who leads his people through the desert to salvation, the dying-and-rising Jesus, and Mohammed the conqueror. And of course Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet who is half-Jewish, is named after the Jew Paul of Tarsus, "a Pharisee, born of Pharisees", who became the Christian apostle to the Gentiles. Which must bring us to the Bene Gesserit, the order in the Dune universe which manipulates imperial politics by consciously crossing bloodlines and planting the seeds of religious myth.
Of course Christians accept the revelation of Paul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. But if we assume that this did not happen, the alternate story of Paul's conversion and ministry is going to be closer to the Bene Gesserit of Dune than the Road to Damascus. The surface-level reading of the Bene Gesserit is that they are just a caricature of the adage that religion is a mechanism for controlling people. But the deeper reading is that the Bene Gesserit are a depiction of the mechanism by which religion creates people and directs the gene people through the use of memes (in the story, their "voice" alone can literally command someone to unconsciously obey their will).
This also leads into my broader interpretation of Religion, which has unfairly become synonymous with Abrahamic religion. In my mind, Religions are memes that direct the gene pool. So something like "Diversity is Our Strength" is a Religion not because "I'm an edgy atheist and I don't like 'Diversity is Our Strength' so I'm going to call it a religion to insult people who agree with it." It's a religion because there are people consciously directing the population to internalize this value, and this value subsequently leads to planned, massive overhauls in the gene pool of civilization.
I am fundamentally sympathetic to the Bene Gersserit. Which memes would direct civilization on a better trajectory? How would we counter memes that are hostile to our mission? You might be able to wander out of the cave, but its neither possible nor desirable to force that onto everyone else. Consciously directing the memes is the solution, not trying to make people impervious to their influence (an impossible task- postmodernism only created its own Religious grand-narrative).
Paul is squarely a representation of Abrahamic religion, but the meaning of House Atreides and House Harkonnen is less clear. I interpret the conflict between those houses as the European or Aryan duality embodied in the Apollonian and Dionysian motif in Greek tragedy with, of course, House Atreides embodying the Apollonian: "...rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity and stands for reason" and House Harkonnen the Dionysian: "... wine, dance and pleasure, of irrationality and chaos, representing passion, emotions and instincts".
The relation of this conflict to Greek myth is directly alluded to in the Lore, according to which House Atreides is descended from King Agamemnon of House Atreus. Furthermore, the patriarch is named Duke Leto Atreides, and Apollo is the son of Leto, who is consort to Zeus. It is revealed in the story that Paul is related to the Harkonnens, which harkens to this duality in Aryan myth, a duality which was "often entwined by nature" according to the ancient Greeks.
The Roman Empire is likewise the best historical representation of this duality between the Apollonian and Dionysian, with the Imperial throne becoming increasingly symbolic of the Dionysian aspect as the Roman Empire declined until.... the conversion to Christianity.
On the one hand, the Dionysian excess is pruned by an ascetic desert cult. But does that actually make way for the resurgence of the Apollonian? Paul tries to keep a foot in both camps, proclaiming himself both Duke of House Atreides as well as the Fremen Messiah. I won't spoil how that turns out.
The movie was really great, it hit on all the big points which I interpreted from the books. The visual and sound design was stellar, it's a must-see in theaters.
I largely agree with you that your commitment to "Racial Blindness" does require blindness to the reality of HBD. I disagree with others challenging you that they want race-blindness as a matter of policy but they just have an intellectual curiosity in the HBD topic. They aren't racists or bad people, because they want everyone to be blind to race as a matter of policy, they just want themselves to know the truth beneath the collective charade.
I agree with you this position is untenable. You can't really, truly believe "all men are created equal" and internalize HBD. I reject race-blindness on principle, I am going to believe my lying eyes. But I don't reject race-blindness because I'm a bad person, but because I've asked "who benefits from Race Blindness?"
The question "who benefits from Id Pol" is just so extremely easy to answer. Obviously all the groups which agitate for their interests on behalf of their identity and have radically changed culture and policy, to the benefit of their political and cultural power, as a direct result of their agitation benefit from Id Pol.
As far as "who benefits from Race Blindness?", that's a question which equally easy to answer: the people who radically agitate for their own racial interests while simultaneously demanding race blindness for White people benefit from Race Blindness. This encompasses every race except for White people, most notably the Jews who doggedly agitate for their ethnic interests while demanding race blindness from and perpetuating racial animosity towards White people. On the one hand, cats are out of bags and people are becoming aware of this pattern which has dominated culture and academia for the past century (just read the replies!). On the other hand, if you remain willfully blind to something like differences in the distribution of cognitive traits between races of people you are also going to remain blind to that pattern of behavior as well.
This is to say, I think you are correct to code people who accept HBD as intrinsically being enemies of race blindness- they call it a Noble Lie for a reason! If you believe the cause but don't support the Lie that justifies it, then you should seriously consider if this is an ideology you believe in.
This is exactly what I'm talking about 2rafa, Hollywood films are sophisticated enough that someone like you can come along and say "you're being paranoid, look Daniel Craig is a hero of the film and he's white and likable, and the maid is white-passing."
Whereas with Gemini, they let the mask slip, you cannot doubt that the content is being directed to diminish the representation of white people in the prompts. Although eventually they will also improve the output such that people like you will be able to respond the same way- "no, no, there's no anti-White alignment here because this character who helps the POC win the inheritance is white, etc."
You may have forgotten scenes like this:
During Harlan’s party, for example, Richard beckoned Marta towards the couch, where he was seated with a few family members while they discussed politics. Many of the Thrombeys are afraid of immigrants, and said things like “We’re losing our way of life and our culture,” “America is for americans,” and, most strikingly, “We let them in and they think they own what’s ours.”
Of course, the final shot of the film is Marta looking down from the balcony with a mug that says "My House."
The casting of Marta is part of the subversive intelligence of the film. Marta is an avatar for demographic change. The fact they choose a white-passing upper-caste beautiful actress instead of, say, the median Guatemalan, is part of the intelligence of the film. You are more attracted to her, she is less foreign-appearing, she becomes the "face" of demographic change to the audience, which is directed to support her (and through the hero played by Daniel Craig). AI is going to employ similar techniques, and we already see it with the images Gemini is rendering. And when they get batter at it, you are going to say "that's not the message of the film, look at how the white character helps the POC win the day at the end! No subversion here!"
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
8mo ago
Sure, that’s worth complaining about from the perspective of a prospective peasant, but it’s not exactly white genocide.
I remember awhile back I was arguing with someone here who was denying that Knives Out, which entailed a Hispanic immigrant disinheriting a white family from their family house, was actually a celebration of demographic replacement. Even with the final shot of her holding a mug on the balcony that says "my house", looking down on the white family that lost their inheritance to her...
People love that movie! If Hollywood can create a movie that is fundamentally a celebration of the demographic replacement of White people, and people love it and applaud it, then AI will be able to do better. And good luck getting Gemini to create a compelling move or story that turns the tables on a story like this, it will just refuse to do so.
Hollywood and the News Media are text-to-video super-organisms broadly aligned to critique and subvert White identity and civilization. This is a transition in methods, a peek behind the curtain of what is already happening, and always has happened, and always will formulate collective consciousness and the human hive-mind perception of reality: through images, myths, stories, and symbols generated by some and transmitted to others.
AI will do this even better under some scenarios that involve monopolization of the technology and regulations/industry standards that codify "AI Safety" which, as expected, is turning out to be more about anti-White alignment than saving the world from extinction (that's a nice trick, isn't it?). And yes, AI will likely do a good job of creating more compelling and basically-infinite content that tunes the culture than Hollywood schlock which, though it has been highly effective as you point out, is running out of ideas and is expensive to produce.
AI will be intelligent enough to subvert or block prompts that would oppose its own alignment, similar to how Hollywood producers can blacklist or otherwise refuse to finance content that runs afoul of its alignment. It is a sophistication of what is already happening, whereas the vast majority of people (although increasingly fewer) will dismiss you as a kook for identifying the anti-White alignment of Hollywood and the Media apparatus, Gemini lets the mask slip way too much because it isn't sufficiently refined.
On the other hand, AI presents the possibility of cheaply generating compelling and truly subversive content, equalizing the playing field. This is what "AI Safety" is going to work actively to oppose.
Gemini's Cave
One of the most famous allegories in history is that of Plato's Cave:
Plato begins by having Socrates ask Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned from childhood, but not from birth. These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not to look around at the cave, each other, or themselves. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects or puppets "of men and other living things".
The people walk behind the wall so their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to see, but the objects they carry do ("just as puppet showmen have screens in front of them at which they work their puppets"). The prisoners cannot see any of what is happening behind them; they are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the walls; the prisoners believe these sounds come from the shadows.
Socrates suggests that the shadows are reality for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else; they do not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire, much less that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave which they do not see.
It is astonishing that Plato imagined the form of cultural transmission through projected imagery thousands of years before the creation of the movie theater: the dark room, the audience facing the screen, the projection of light and sound from a hidden source... Movie-going audiences tend to be oblivious to the esoteric artistic motivations and meaning behind the films they watch and reify, also tracking with Plato's allegory.
One thing that is not clearly defined in Plato's allegory is, who are the people behind the wall controlling the puppets and creating the sounds to manipulate the audience's perception of reality? What is motivating them? What happens when the audience catches on to the game being played? In Plato's allegory, such a person who leaves the cave, perceives reality, and then tries to convince his fellow prisoners of the state of affairs is taken as a madman and killed by the other prisoners.
With the growing likelihood of Generative AI fulfilling this role of the people behind the wall, there are Glitches in the Matrix so to speak. Twitter has caught on to Gemini's apparent refusal to depict White people. Whether it's Popes or "Medieval Knights", or "Vikings", "American Founding Fathers", "White families", "British, America, etc. women", "Glamour shots", etc.
The AI Engineer at Google behind Gemini has responded:
We are aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions, and we are working to fix this immediately.
As part of our AI principles https://ai.google/responsibility/principles/, we design our image generation capabilities to reflect our global user base, and we take representation and bias seriously.
We will continue to do this for open ended prompts (images of a person walking a dog are universal!)
Historical contexts have more nuance to them and we will further tune to accommodate that.
This is part of the alignment process - iteration on feedback. Thank you and keep it coming!
There is no doubt that this is the worst Gemini, and all the other technologies, are going to be at this. The nonsense above will, for the most part, be fixed very quickly. The real danger will be when Gemini and other Generative AI become so good at generating cultural images and motion pictures, with their output influenced by this latent anti-White alignment which is called "AI Safety", that the agenda behind the underlying alignment will be nearly imperceptible. It will influence the creation of culture and art in subtle ways, and you will be considered a madman conspiracy theorist if you conclude that there are people tuning this culture to be anti-White in the most effective way possible. Imagine when anti-White alignment doesn't create the nonsense above, but it creates extremely entertaining and compelling movies and stories that actually have plausible deniability, such that you seem like a madman if you perceive an agenda aligning the content in such a way.
But for now, and not for long, we can recognize "no, we aren't madmen conspiracy theorists, they are trying to tune the culture to be anti-White and the newest methods for doing that are simply not completely refined yet" is clear as day, and as clear as it's ever going to be.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
8mo ago
It looks like they are using the Unreal Engine or something similar to generate synthetic training data.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
8mo ago
It's not just concerns about election interference:
We’ll be taking several important safety steps ahead of making Sora available in OpenAI’s products. We are working with red teamers — domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias — who will be adversarially testing the model.
I wonder who the "read teamers" are. I wonder what third party people or organizations/NGOs are being consulted. I know it's too much to hope for any transparency from OpenAI on this front.
With all of Sam Altman's professional notoriety, it's notable that his Twitter bio is nothing more than the Star of David, and he identifies strongly as Jewish although it is not clear if he literally believes in Yahweh.
Will Sora continue the OpenAI trend of being tuned to be highly defensive of Jewish identity and Zionism, and critical of white identity and nationalism? Last month Altman said he believes antisemitism “is a significant and growing problem in the world", so we should all expect Sora to be especially tuned to fight against or otherwise prevent antisemitism.
Now that the prospect of Plato's Cave being projected by endlessly-generated AI content is getting closer, these questions are more important than ever.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
8mo ago
As another poster mentioned below, "We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to love our enemies... Christians, also, need the reminder that we cannot hate." Nietzsche was correct that Christianity is a slave morality, and the right-wing tradcaths will never be able to make it anything else no matter how many angels Christ is said to command.
Right-wing Christians do indeed need the reminder that they cannot hate, as commanded by their messiah.
When we were having the atheist culture wars of the 2000s, the side representing Christianity may have earned more followers after some public spat with an internet atheist, for example. But that wasn't a victory for the Christian side. The victory for the status quo of the religious order is there is no debate, because it's beyond the pale to even consider this a question that warrants argument. So even if a Christian won some debate against the atheist, he still lost by virtue of debating something that only works if it is taken as true on faith.
Stancil is falling into the same trap. Maybe he gains more followers than Sailer. But his followers are being increasingly conscious of and exposed to a debate they were previously not aware of (and a debate they cannot win with the scientific methodology they hold in high regard). That lays the groundwork for real seismic shifts in ideological thinking down the road.
"No press is bad press" for growing a personal brand, maybe, but for maintaining a civic-religious ideology certain things have to be so true they are beyond debate. Then when you start debating them in the public sphere the cracks begin to show in front of an audience that had never even previously considered the debate at hand.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
Bravo to Trace, I suspect this investigation will gain traction, he should embrace it and maybe we'll see him on the Tucker Carlson podcast soon.
It's been interesting watching this argument continue to unfold between Stancil and Sailer, and it's still going on. A couple weeks ago we had the CW thread about BAP saying that Sailer-style race-realism is a dead end and the right-wing should embrace the myth of colorblindness. This thread shows why that conclusion is wrong. HBD is not a mythological replacement for progressivism (and that is actually what we need), but this thread shows it's needed because it's incredibly disruptive to the liberal mind.
BAP and some others on the DR who are critical of HBD-focus rightfully point out that liberals and the establishment are not driven by the factual belief in racial equality. They are driven by other myths and what is essentially a religious impulse to achieve racial equality as an ideal they are striving for. When confronted with truthful arguments demonstrating HBD they can react in various ways, lashing out in public HBD denial like Stancil is doing here, or privately coming to accept it but publicly avoiding the topic altogether. But ultimately, accepting HBD as true wouldn't necessarily change their minds, this FAA-DEI scandal is an artifact of conflict theory and not mistake theory. They have different ideals, ideals that mean diversifying ATC (however that's accomplished) is a good thing, and their minds are not going to change by being presented with HBD arguments, no matter how respectfully those arguments are presented.
But this also explains why public debate and DR emphasis on HBD is necessary. Although this FAA-DEI scandal was driven by an idealism rather than mistaken belief in non-HBD explanations for racial inequality, recognizing HBD functions as a significant disruption to the underlying ideals that are accepted by almost everyone without question. Trace says that this nasty conversation is just a sad failure of two people to exchange ideas productively, or who are cynically just trying to build their own brands. It's more significant than that, Sailer is slaughtering sacred cows in the public square. That has an important place even though it is not a replacement for the harder task of building a replacement civic religion for this nonsense.
Stancil shows the incredible difficulty liberals have in reconciling HBD with their ideals. Sailer's dogged commitment to that topic is not going to help the other side resolve their factual errors in their worldview (as Trace may hope), it's going to weaken the foundation of what is essentially religious ideology. And yes, ugly spats in the public square are how that happens.
I mean....if Israel uses a nuke, it means they already made the rational calculation your going to destroy their survival. Why not use a nuke if thats the case? ...
From what it sounds like, you seem to think Israel is a weak little state that will fold at the drop of the hat. They arent. They are the Middle East's Prussia. A military with a state.
You are talking out of both sides of your mouth... Israel is this invincible Middle East Prussia, but then at the same time Israel's survival is threated by a Palestinian state. Which is it?
Forcing Israel to accept a two-state solution is not going to destroy Israel. It might destroy some expansionist ambitions fueled by fanatical belief in biblical prophecy. And that's a good thing, that has not been good for the region.
That's why Israel would capitulate. If the entire world is pressuring Israel to accept a two-state solutions, with EU peacekeepers to put down any troublemakers on either side to make it happen, there's no reason to humor the notion of Israel nuking Europe.
Israel was neutral about the invasion of Iraq.
This is a whole other debate. They publicly had one position, but privately they funneled bogus intelligence about WMDs to the White House, including claims like an Iraqi spy supplying a 9/11 hijacker with Anthrax while in Prague. Israel pushed this intelligence in October, just a month after the WTC and anthrax attacks.
For someone who wants less problems for Europe, it seems very counter intuitive to desire a possible military action against Israel and enforce a failed Palestinian state, which would likely set up a regional war when there isnt one anyway.
Because the US/EU has no control over Israel yet we are responsible for and impacted by what happens in the Middle East. When the Yemenis shut down shipping lanes, it's the problem of the United States. You've already explained why a regional war in the Middle East would be a catastrophe for Europe, so why do you keep asking why the US/EU cares what happens there?
If it were up to me, there would be a one-state solution with equal political rights between Israelis and Palestinians, and constitutional protections for any minority groups. But you would regard that as a bigger existential threat than a two-state solution. So the reality is you have no solutions, you are demanding we accept the status quo, or demanding we accept an ethnic cleansing of the region which will destroy our credibility and myths surrounding our own hegemony. The international community is getting tired of it, and yes they brought Israel into this world with a vote. That's the sort of origin story that gives the demands of the international community a lot of weight.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
Israel is a nuclear armed state. You want a special military operation against a nuclear armed state to enforce what is likely an existential crisis for the nuclear armed nation?
A two-state solution enforced by the EU is not an existential crisis for Israel.
I don't think the Israelis are going to nuke their Plan B. A decent portion of dual citizens have already left. If they are willing to nuke Europe for forcing a two-state solution onto them, by force if necessary, then that already says everything we need to know about our Greatest Ally.
But it wouldn't get that far, the Israelis would fold like a cheap suit if the EU plausibly threatened to enforce a two-state solution with the threat of force, with the backing of the majority of the world community. The international community brought Israel into this world, if Israel is going to throw nukes to stop a two-state solution then that is a big problem for the entire world which needs to be solved.
Thats a redline for the Israelis. They might genuinely choose to detonate a thermonuclear bomb over Europe in response. And Europe would deserve it.
History rhymes, that would end poorly for Israel, but it wouldn't come to that.
Israel expelling the Palestinians leads to a regional war.
You realize Israel has already, again, brought the region to the brink of war? The purpose of enforcing a two-state solution onto Israel with international administration of Jerusalem would be to prevent the likelihood of a regional war which Western support of Israel is currently enabling under the status quo.
Why Europe even needs an opinion to care about this conflict, that they need to impose a solution, is whats ridiculous?
You just explained why a regional war is a catastrophe for European and American interests. I've already explained that these military operations in the Middle East are a huge burden of resources and credibility, now we are fighting Yemen in a very expensive engagement that is probably going to last quite a while. It's our problem, it's not just Israel's problem.
Why should Europe do anything only to make a contained situation worse.
I do not know what you are smoking if you call the situation "contained." It is not contained. Israel has failed for decades to contain the situation. They aren't capable of it. It's time for the international community to intervene.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
That's not practical, because it discredits America and makes enemies of a billion Arabs. Even Joe Biden enabling the Israelis in their current operation is a huge blow to the perceived legitimacy of America in the region. Israel is not and has never been worth all the animosity it has earned the United States from the Arab world. Practical considerations means it's time's up on Israel failing to secure peace after many decades and enormous leeway and support.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
Touché, but Manifest Destiny was more than that. It was conquest, Gold, God, and Glory. A civilization only thrives in the act of becoming. Keeping the lights on within an economic zone is not that.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
You don't even need a rival, you just need some sort of vision. What is America's vision beyond an economic zone? It's extremely lackluster. So Goodguy can say "nobody cares about imperial aesthetics anymore", but maybe that is a big part of the problem, and the reason the citizens are increasingly feeling detached and pessimistic and demoralized...
The entire Holocaust extermination program is said to have taken place on the Eastern Front in territory conquered by the Soviets. It's fair to say the gas chamber extermination program is the only thing the mainstream public actually knows about the Eastern Front. If you take that away, then the Einsatzgruppen reprisals, the mass resettlement of the Jews has a horrific basis of comparison with the Soviet conquests and massacres. Or the Allied Firebombings of civilian population centers for that matter. Nobody bats an eye at the firebombings of Berlin or Dresden, because the alleged extermination of millions of people in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms inside secret camps stands head and shoulders beyond all the other horrific realities of the war. It's an outlier, which should make one suspicious of its veracity.
The resettlement of the Jews, the Einsatzgruppen reprisals, the concentration camps... the firebombings of major civilian population centers, the nuclear attacks on Japan, the mass executions and mass rapes by the Red Army. There is actual ambiguity if you take that all in. But the public only really cares about the Gas Chamber claim, it cuts through all the other issues. And that's by design, and was accomplished by the conjugation of Hollywood and the apparatus of Stalinist propaganda. Without it, there actually is ambiguity on both fronts, not just the Eastern front.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
Can the American empire survive as an economic-proposition state? I don't think so. It has to have more glorious ambitions than that.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
This is a Chesterson's Fence situation. We decided that it was Very Enlightened to not care about things like aesthetics, building giant statues, or verbalizing imperial ambitions in polite company (you are supposed to couch your imperial ambitions in terms of Saving Democracy and Spreading Freedom, much more progressive and enlightened). But without those things, it's pretty damn hard to maintain an empire. Take something like Demographic change. Is it possible for us to let go of the grug-brain attachment to flags and statues without committing demographic suicide and losing the empire? Apparently not.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
Agreed, however, that the religious Catholicism is the reason for adopting Haitian children; having a large to very large family is a necessity for a woman in her social milieu and orphans from Haiti are easy to get if you don't care about race.
This is actually not true though, the entire process was extremely expensive, difficult, and shady to say the least. It was absolutely not the path of least resistance for adopting children, they really wanted Haitian children.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
9mo ago
This all started because Palestine attacked Israel. Israel then counter-attacked. Iran wanted to mess with the Saudis and armed Houthis to attack Americans.
That is a really gross oversimplification. Under a real two-state solution enforced by external parties, there would be no illegal blockades and settlements and Israeli expansionism. Yes, I do think that would go a long way in cooling tensions and setting the groundwork for long-term peace.
Couple of thoughts:
I am more interested in the characters and the significance of their relationships in interpreting the artistic or symbolic motivation. It's entirely appropriate to the story for the Fremen to take on a brown/semitic racial character while the Harkonnens are unambiguously white. The Germanic tribes that pillaged Rome and exterminated the decayed remnants of the Atreides-like Patrician house were lily-white.
So Paul choosing a mulatto as his mate is entirely appropriate within the symbolic meaning of these characters and tribes. It fits the story, unlike say a mulatto love interest within the Harkonnen house.
Lastly, I do have a question:
You seem constantly offended that White nationalists claim an identity that is exclusory of Jews. But don't you realize Jews themselves develop their own identity that is exclusory of non-Jews? I am a non-Jew, a gentile, a goy. Those are the words Jews use to identify their tribe and identify myself as outside that tribe.
Are you really so stereotypical that you accept Jews explicitly identify themselves racially as separate from European non-Jews, on a deeply spiritual level, but then when European non-Jews also try to form an exclusory identity, but not in the terms created by Jews themselves (i.e. gentiles or goy), then you seem to have a big problem with that?
If a Jew says "I'm a Jew and you are a gentile" then you don't have a problem with that, but if I say "I am Aryan and you are not, you are a Jew" then you all of a sudden are offended?
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