georgioz
2mo ago
Legalization of marihuana brought into my view something that I myself have not seen before. And that is the fact, that many people just support it from first principles, you have these liberal or libertarian assumptions about the world and legalization of marihuana is just part of it. It is first principles thinking - people should be able to do what they want and therefore legalization of marihuana is good. That's it.
Since then I had some discussions with pro-legalization people and they are kind of stumped by a simple question: what good will legalization of marihuana bring to the country? What benefit will you have if your plumbers and doctors and teachers can go about their lives high as kites without any legal repercussion or stigma? What I found was that they do not even think about it this way. Weed should be legalized, because legalization of weed is "good". Smoking weed is just some apriori human right, no matter what. At best, they can point out to a good caused by people not being fined/jailed for making it illegal. Which is generalized argument for legalization of anything: if you legalize murder, then murderers would not have to suffer in jail. That is an argument I guess, but what good will legalization of murder bring to the rest of the society besides people engaging in this activity?
As for what I was wrong about, count me into weed legalization as well as many other liberal causes. I thought I was the enlightened one, smashing old superstitions and bringing new light to humanity as some avatar of Prometheus. I was wrong, I did not realize that I was implicitly holding religious adjacent beliefs, and that I used semantic stoppers such as "X is human right" without actually understanding where I am coming from. I thought I was above mere mortal faults, while I was the most gullible of all the people, because I did not even stop to think where my moral premises such as "human rights" and myriads of slogans such as "taxation is theft" come from and how are they grounded.
I’m having trouble distinguishing your responses from just garden variety selfishness to be honest.
Of course you would have such a trouble, you worship the system. And now we are back to 2020 shaming, the modus operandi during lockdowns: "no, going to funeral of your grandmother and meeting with three or more people is selfish, we are now saving human life medical system". The point is, I don't care about monsters trying to shame me anymore. That is what I realized. Some people just have different moral assumptions. I am sure that there were people in some Aztec village shaming their neighbors, who refused to offer their children to rain god Tlaloc. Do they wish drought and calamity upon good people of the village? We are trying to save lives here! Sacrifice to the system at once! It is a small price to pay.
Me behaving slightly differently for a few weeks during a triage event in the local hospital is a pretty small price
Oh, your moral highness deems it a small price to pay, so everybody should do the same. Please talk more about selfishness. I will not even comment on "for a few weeks" part, yeah the famous two weeks to stop the spread lie to drop-feed the measures .
georgioz
2mo ago
Yeah, the whole "flattening the curve" slogan by measures such as social distancing and lockdowns was based on not overburdening the healthcare system as the primary argument. Were you living under the rock? Elective surgeries were cancelled, medical screenings were postponed and more - all in the name of "the system". I had a friend working in a hospital during lockdowns, when self-isolated people were beating on pots from their balconies, giving praise to heroic doctors, while she was sitting in empty hospital doing nothing. She thought it was stupid. And I really think that the system was the primary concern, stupid halfway-thinking people just substituted "human life" with "healthcare system" and then went from there.
So yes, I do think that "saving the system" was the primary concern, with some vague nod to "human life" to justify it. And as I said, this thinking is now pervasive and it will get worse.
georgioz
2mo ago
See, for me the human life is about enjoying life, meeting your family and friends, being able to grieve for your lost parents or even putting yourself through some tough events subtracting some supposed utils to achieve one of the myriad of goals you may have. Medical system is down there on the chain of what human life represents to me. I thought most people implicitly understand it, but that is apparently not the case.
You get it, if you reduce and equate “human life” with medical system in your assumption, then the rest of the stuff follows. You treat the system as human life, so everyones perogative is to serve the human life medical system. I refuse this equivalency to begin with.
But I am not surprised that for instance utilitarians think this way, it is the same idea to sublimate/identify values into something else like utils, and then just follow the calculation to its inevitable and logically sound monstrosity.
georgioz
2mo ago
I observe that skiing is not actually banned. Neither is smoking or being fat.
One of those things was banned during COVID lockdowns, the other two were exempt. Maybe somebody thought through it stupidly, stopping halfway through and other stupid people ate it.
Sure, but there is more to the life than just your pulse. Should we ban kids skating, because they can break their bone and thus be the burden on the system? What I found more scary is how readily this thing was accepted without question. Ask not what the healthcare system can do for you, ask what you can do for the healthcare system. And again, this is nothing new, I just realized it at that point. For instance in the UK there is heated debate if immigration is good or bad thing for their National Health Service. The NHS is like a sacred cow, people accept it without thinking and put such an importance on it, that it is almost as if NHS has agency of its own, and we need to think what will harm NHS. It is just weird.
This idea is just fundamentally incompatible with my morals. Where does this lead?
This idea is ubiquitous. One of the point I realized this, was COVID era argument: we have to lock people down in order not to overburden healthcare system. It was one of the most stupid arguments I have heard - my purpose and governing principle in my life is now supposed to be not to overburden healthcare system? This amorphous system is actually more valuable than human life as it is embodied in my daily activities and pleasures. I exist for the benefit of this system - not the other way around. No more dangerous activities such as skiing or anything else. By the way the same goes for other similar arguments: smoking and being fat and chronically ill is terrible for the healthcare system, so you should stop doing it.
It reminded me of the old Monty Python skit.
georgioz
2mo ago
As you said, contraception only lowers the risk of unplanned pregnancy while increasing sexual promiscuity. Additionally presence of both options also decreases willingness of men to marry their pregnant girlfriends, no more shotgun weddings. The logic is simple - men did not want the child and it was woman's decision to not take pills properly and to keep the child when abortion is such an easy and accessible "healthcare" option. Which on average increases abortions while also increasing single parenthood.
But constantly talking about it on the national stage does not help. It is just virtue signaling. What would help is to win some fucking elections.
This is such an incomprehensive take to me. Pro-life movement had one of the biggest victories recently with repeal of Roe v. Wade, even leftists tacitly admitted that
This decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court,” President Joe Biden said. But he added: “This is not over.”
As for "winning elections" this to me seems as a strange thing, what do you need to win elections for? Presumably to pursue your preferred policies. If your candidate "wins elections" but then he goes against your deepest held values, does it even make sense to call him your candidate anymore? And it is not such a small number of people - according to Gallup the number of people who say abortions should be illegal under all circumstances ranges from 10%-20% since 1975.
One thing I also noted, is how right and left differs in treating their ideological fringes. Leftist mainstream people have no problem tolerating or celebrating even the most unhinged leftist radicals. Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers can get a cushy job at public University and get praise from Wall Street Journal columnist as a model citizen. Marxist radicals such as Angela Davis can be popular champions of police reform movement no problem. Democrats nurture and take care of their radical fringes, they defend them and propagandize in their favor, and then they use their vigor and energy to replenish their ranks and to push Overton window in favor of their policies. Kamala can have the most insane takes like taxing unrealized capital gains or transitioning children of illegal immigrants for free - and you see the ranks closing and defending her exactly on the grounds of pragmatism: it's only a rhetoric to mobilize more radical voter base, nothing to see here. She is still our joyful momala.
While the right absolutely shits not only on "far fringes" like J6ers, who have nothing on leftist radicals like Kathy Boudin - the mother of Chesa Boudin and professor at Columbia after being released from prison in 2003 - bombing the senate building. That would be absurd, but the right also shits on anybody who is not moderate like pro-life activists. They even shit on people who go against mainstream leftist narrative, it is "moderate" right who will be the first to execute their up-and-coming talent for racism, sexism, being pro-life - exactly like you do now. The rightist moderates completely adopt leftist versions of morality and sins, and push it on fellow rightists, moving the Overton window. It would be absolutely inconceivable, that some right-wing version of Bill Ayers such as some former abortion clinic terrorist would be a chair of charity organization, a university professor at state university and could ever be called as "model citizen" by WSJ or similar media.
So yeah, the right will not win elections with castrated elite, with no semblance of balls or spine, which tone-polices and cancels their own people in accordance to leftist sensibilities. And even if they win, they won't do shit with that victory. Or maybe even worse, they will take their victory and cave to leftist preferences as we saw it in UK with immigration, because supposed conservatives are terrified of being called as racists or booed if they go take their kids from private school/university. Who needs enemies with wussy wankers as allies.
During WW1 shell crisis in Britain, the government was able to ramp up production from 500,000 shells in first few months of the War (since August-December) to 16 million shells in 1915.
During shell crisis the reasons were similar - UK was missing some key chemicals like acetone, now Europe and to some extent US have shortages of guncotton and other basic materials. By the way during WW1 Dupont was able to produce 500 tons of guncotton a day. We are now two years into a conflict where Western powers know they are draining their munition reserves and they still cannot produce near the volume of munitions that countries were able to produce 100 years ago. In fact US and EU is reliant on guncotton production from China
You may say that it is problem of state orders, but that itself is a problem of state capacity or to better say incapacity. No decision can be straigthtforward and is mired in endless internal battles due to incompetence and other reasons.
georgioz
2mo ago
most Christians I've known are content to live and let live
I have no problem with live and let live, but they should keep their heresies outside of Catholic church. Catholics acknowledge three pillars of their faith: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and Sacred Magisterium as opposed to protestant sola scriptura. Catholics accept the authority of the church, this free-for-all shit that is happening in constantly fracturing protestant churches so they can just vibe with Jesus on personal level does not fly.
I would not say that let's say kaiser Franz Joseph or tzar Nicholas II or kaiser Wilhelm II or president Raymond Poincaré or prime minister David Lloyd George were "abnormal" leaders for their times and yet they are all co-responsible for WW1, which should put them into 0.01% of abnormal leaders according to your criteria - right?
Also I was assessing Hitler pre-war, of course once you have total World War, then all comparisons are off. In fact related to the topic of Darryl Cooper vs Churchill - and we can throw Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman into the bunch - grounding to dust millions of houses full of civilians during air raids on cities in Germany and Japan, including dropping atomic bombs is up there on the scale of atrocities committed on civilian population by any leader in the history of the world. Vietnam war caused around 2 million civilian deaths in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - which makes JFK and Johnson and Nixon also pretty high on the abnormal list. What percentile of abnormality are those figures in your eyes?
And I see why you do not want to discuss these things, because exactly as Cooper points out, the WW2 is prime example of hyperreality event, it has high place as a national myth in very many countries, which makes any assessment immediately mired in controversy. The thing is that as the time goes this pressure is lessened - not many people are riled up if one assesses pros and cons of Napolen or Emperor Ferdinand II or if they talk about how Gengis Khan can be praised for bringing hundred years long Pax Mongolica, which enabled Europe to reach to orient with explorers like Marco Polo and spurred them toward modernity in its own way. We already see WW1 in rearview mirror and you can finally have reasonable discussions about the events leading to the war as well as if the treaty o Versailles. It is inevitable that the same will happen with WW2 some time, Cooper is just one of the early birds in this sense.
I guess my gripe is with the definition of "normal". Let's think of today - I think Putin is a "normal" leader. Not dissimilar to Xi Jinping or range of various leaders in Africa or Middle East etc. Hitler espoused especially virulent version of fascism, but then Germany was also facing unique challenges. If let's say Germany won WW1 and carved out Lotharingia/Burgundy out of France/Benelux as a new puppet state populated by Dutch and German and French and Flemish people, I would not expect rump France to have your cookie-cutter milquetoast leaders just accepting that.
That said you cant talk about the causal chain of WWII without looking at WWI. From the british perspective WWI starts with the invasion of Belgium.
You cannot talk about causal chain of WW1 from British perspective without looking at the whole Causal Chain. Which is assassination of Franz Ferdinand > Austrian Ultimatum Against Serbia on July 23rd > Russia starts secret "partial" mobilization on July 25th > Austria declares war against Serbia on July 28th > Russian full mobilization on July 30th > July 31st German ultimatum for Russia to demobilize, which was not replied > August 1st German mobilization and declaration of war against Russia > August 1st, Britain mobilizes its Navy > August 2nd, Britain guarantees Belgium > August 2nd, Germany asks Belgium for military access, is refused > August 3rd Germany declares war on France as part of Schlieffen plan > August 4th Germany attacks Belgium > August 4th, Britain declares war on Germany
One thing to understand about WW1 mobilization is that it is equivalent of launching ICBMs. Countries had decades to meticulously prepare so they can get their army ready in matter of days. Soldiers need to be concentrated and equipped, trains have to be rerouted etc. If you stop the mobilization it would be as if one side of the nuclear conflict self-destructed their own rockets while the other side has them still in the air, putting themselves into very dangerous position.
I think that the biggest triggers of the war was behavior of Austria and Russia, each in their own way. By the time Britain made their mind in August, it was too late - Russians were in the middle of mobilization almost for a week and dominoes fell. In fact to me it seems that Germans were too timid, if they were more aggressive, they may have pulled it of - if they had one more week against Russians and and mobilized on July 24th/25th. History remembers them as warmongers anyways.
This is all to say, Hitler was not a normal leader, and whatever priors we have about how "normal countries" work don't apply here.
Compared to what? He was on the level of Stalin and at least in the same league as Franco or Mussolini who actually invented blackshirts as a precursor to Hitler's brownshirts, and we do not even go to atrocities committed by Italians in Ethiopia. Even "milder" leaders like Austrofascist leader Engelbert Dollfuss committed political violence in three figure range. We can go on, especially early post-WW1 period was full of atrocities such as during Polish-Soviet War or under Hungarian Soviet Republic and related red and white terror.
I think your sense of "normal" is highly curated by modern sensibilities and information available to you, which is vastly different to what people in Europe lived as "normal" for decade of their lives or more prior to WW2.
georgioz
2mo ago
They way the discussion went was that Tucker asked Darryl what he is working on, Darryl responded that he is working on WW2 and the rest is history. To me it is insane to just lie about basic facts of your life just because it is an election year. But it is a good form of projection of how other people think.
It's not only Slovak media. Once you are marked as pro-Putin, the whole media complex parrots this endlessly even in the face of contrary evidence, I think there is some media incest in this manner. Examples regarding Fico from Reuters or Guardian or even Die Welt.
They are all lame, that is why if media say that AFD party is Pro-Russian, then it really is tough to know what to think about it, they just cannot report about these issues honestly. It really is terrible, because people do not have time to delve into these issues deeply and maybe they really are Pro-Russia. It is hard to tell.
georgioz
2mo ago
While BSW is of the 'refuse to cooperate with AfD' direction, they are also notable for stated opposition to supporting Ukraine with more military aid, though how hard they hold that view / what they might trade it away for in coalition-negotiation remains to be seen.
I have no special insight into German politics, but in Slovakia this pro-Russian and pro-Putin moniker was attached to the current prime minister Robert Fico before elections. Interestingly enough, one of the the first things he did post-election was a conference with Ukrainian prime minister Denys Šmyhaľ in the city of Uzhhorod, where he signed the treaty of military cooperation with Ukraine, expressed his support for Ukrainian EU integration as well as support for EU military package. The rhetoric from anti-Fico coalition then changed that he betrayed his voters and that he only wants to make money for his cronies who will provide the military assistance.
It is incredibly difficult to navigate this situation, I am just used to media lying and speaking from the both sides of their mouth. It is just sad state of things.
I used to despair that not only we're losing democracy, but The West in general is also trending in a similar way although slower. The entire western hemisphere seems to be becoming like Brazil, bit by bit, all sort of places that I used to admire in North America and Europe gradually resembles me of my own country. There's soon gonna be no champion of Free Speech, Small Government and so on in the global stage.
This reminded me an old article from Foreign Affairs called The Brazilianization of the World. It is a little bit more lefty critique for my taste, but some passages are eerie:
In political terms, Brazilianization means patrimonialism, clientelism, and corruption. Rather than see these as aberrations, we should understand them as the normal state of politics when widely shared economic progress is not available, and the socialist Left cannot act as a countervailing force. It was the industrial proletariat and socialist politics that kept liberalism honest, and prevented elites from instrumentalizing the state for their own interests.
The “revolt of the elites”—their escape from society, physically into heavily guarded private spaces, economically into the realm of global finance, politically into anti-democratic arrangements that outsource responsibility and inhibit accountability—has created hollowed-out neoliberal states. These are polities closed to popular pressures but open to those with the resources and networks to directly influence politics. The practical consequence is not just corruption, but also states lacking the capacity to undertake any long-range developmental policies—even basic ones that might advance economic growth, such as the easing of regional inequalities. State failure in the pandemic is only the most flagrant recent example.
Brazil’s ignoble history of irresolution and indeterminacy, coupled with a dualized society in which hustling is essential to survival, gave birth to Brazilian cynicism. Increasingly, the West is coming to ape this same pattern. Not only does there seem to be no way past capitalist stagnation, but politics is characterized by a void between people and politics, citizens and the state. The ruling class’s relation to the masses is one of condescension. Elites call anyone who revolts against the contemporary order racist, sexist, or some other delegitimizing term. They also advance outlandish conspiracy theories for why electorates have failed to vote for their favored candidate—most visibly with “Russiagate” in the United States and beyond. This phenomenon, dubbed Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome, only breeds further cynicism in Western publics, who are increasingly taken with conspiracy theories of their own. This is another Brazilian speciality: in a country with very low levels of institutional trust and plentiful examples of actual conspiracies, conspiracy theories flourish.
Revolts against the establishment, when they aren’t driven by QAnon-style derangement, wield the weapon of anti-politics, whereby not only formal politics, but representation and political authority itself are rejected. Anti-politics tends to result in either a delegitimation of democracy itself, leading to authoritarian rule, or it prompts technocrats to learn from populists, returning to the scene promising an end to corruption and real change. The result is the same sort of distant, out-of-touch politics that prompted anti-political revolts in the first place. Brazil’s history from 2013 to 2019 is this dynamic presented in pure, crystallized form. But the same pattern is visible in Italy’s Five-Star Movement, the anti-corruption protests that led to Viktor Orbán’s ascent in Hungary, Trump, and Boris Johnson’s technopopulist attempt to defuse Brexit.
I am from Eastern Europe and I was born into socialist country and lived my childhood through the tail end of communist regime and then the newborn democracy. I disagree with the author that this is the result of some neoliberal capitalist plot, this pervasive feeling of frustration, political apathy and resulting cynicism was defining feature of late-stage communist regimes as well. I'd say it is the feature of out-of-touch bureaucratic regimes, all too quick to use force to save their pretend legitimacy. Everybody shouts the slogans and lies and everybody knows that everybody knows it's all a farce. Actually it is even worse than that, if somebody has some ideals or expects some decent behavior, he is laughed at - especially if something wrong happens to him. It is certain level of schadenfreude - you stupid naive moron, you thought you could have some hope? You got what you deserve for not being as cynical as me.
Corruption is no longer viewed as something wrong, it is basically the normal way to live. Everybody knows that some professions are underpaid, that some palms have to be greased so it is absolutely normal that your doctor asks for a bribe, if only because he also has to bribe somebody else in order to keep his license. "Patrimonialism, clientelism, and corruption" is the oil that lubricates the whole machine, everybody understands and accepts it. Everything is so bleak, people find solace in their private spaces - their huts where they can escape for a brief time and forget the drudgery and hopelessness of their situation with elephant doses of alcohol. Yeah, it is quite depressing and I always get this feeling if I watch some local movies from 70ies and 80ies. You can almost feel it through the screen.
georgioz
2mo ago
It is still an apt parable. Go and buy canned food, with this inflation you would be king. The key thing is that good ant would also invest in his children to take care of him if he can no longer work thus “storing” and “saving” the labor.
georgioz
2mo ago
That is beside my point. There are things you can meaningfully save, mostly durable goods. You can build a house, buy pots and other goods that can last your lifetime. You could store some canned goods and so forth. You can also do this on larger scale of building national capital: highways, bridges, factories that may work a long time.
However unavoidably you cannot save labor. It has to be provided when you need it. Your house and highways etc. need to be maintained, the factory needs labor for production. You can sell your assets when old to current population in presence of rule of law and get labor of youth in exchange. But if there are less workers, then your assets will buy less. That is the problem in any society to be solved.
In the extreme situation of the movie “Children of men”, where all that is left is 70+ old infirm people, they are fucked. There are no firemen and policemen and bakers and linemen and nurses and doctors and all the other essential workers to sell your gold to. The same it happens in wars and civil unrest where your gold necklace will buy you loaf of bread. You will die of hunger in your bed. Technically, you individually could save more, but it would be impossible society wide.
The same logic applies in 50% or 90% young population collapse scenario. That is the point.
georgioz
2mo ago
According to Morgan Stanley 41% women aged 25-44 were single and childless in 2018 and the number increases around 0.4% a year. Also according to Pew the married women are voting more conservative, it's the strongest predictor of conservative leaning women, 26 points difference compared to never married women.
There is something happening to political coalition making, it is novel and I agree also dangerous.
georgioz
2mo ago
The important part is "displays of party loyalty". You did not want "true believers" next to you, when some high ranking general or other party member wanted something not exactly communist-like, such as expensive western gadget or other contraband. I think it is similar to HR ladies today - you want to have good activist cred by posting the right flag on your social media and all that, but you should also not interfere if the CEO has some fun with his assistant on his business trip. It's the same logic why Trudeau surfed through his blackface episode so easily - everybody just pretended it does not matter, because if you said anything, then maybe you would garner some level of (whispered) sympathy, but then find yourself suddenly redundant and replaced.
This is what is so comical about all the activists: the corruption and nepotism is not the bug, it is the feature of all these stupid systems. Communism was tried so many times and it always devolves into some kind of nightmare, often of fascist variety. It is because it is baked into the system.
I asked you before, what concrete actions are you taking when you strongly believe that we will have utopia/apocalypse in 10 years? Do you have any bonds with longer than 10 year maturity? Do you find it stupid to invest in any new whisky with a plan for aging it for more than 10 years? Along the line with your demographics skepticism - do you consider people stupid for having kids now, if they won't matter in 10 years? A this point I am really curious.
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