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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26075 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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Okay, I think I see where you're coming from. To sum up as briefly as possible: the Anglos have always been good at handicapping civilisational competitors (Napoleon, Axis, Russia) and continue to be so. Anglo powers are still number 1 and so clearly their foreign policy is still effective. Is that about right?

A few serious points of contention:

  1. I was thinking of policy in the last 50 years rather than the last 200. Quite happy to admit that Napoleonic and WW era policy was mostly pretty decent.
  2. I do not see America and Britain as comfortably belonging to the same civilisation group. We've been somewhat hostile for most of our history, and the social structure & cultural mores were very different before 20 years ago. American policy over the 20th century has been to bring Britain down from 'friendly rival' to 'cringing servant', and IMO has done so successfully. We also share a language, so British culture is rapidly being overwhelmed by the culture of Imperial Centre.
  3. As a consequence of the above, the fact that British companies are mostly IPOing in America isn't comforting to me. We're being drained dry of anything that could let us stand on our own two feet. And I've seen nothing to indicate that British AI regulation is anything other than Rishi Sunak's desperate (and self-harming) bid for relevance. Those who can, do. Those who can't, regulate. Witness Tsarist attempts to outlaw machine guns prior to WW1.
  4. I agree with you that Germany does seem to have suffered much worse from the war. I'm not sure how much of that is just that they were a booming manufacturer with further to fall, but it does seem odd.

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