Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Even assuming that this is true, could they really have done it without support or at least acquiescence+aftercare from the US?
Acquiescence+aftercare from the US was reportedly that the Americans told the Germans before the attack, as well as soon after.
As for being puzzled by regional parties whose security concerns Germany dismissed and ignorred in pursuing Nord Stream, I suspect you believe they have a far greater fear and/or positive opinion of Germany than they do. Germany's Nord Stream policy was not exactly considered a benign or neutral policy by its Baltic neighbors. German politicians had not only insisted it was ridiculous to oppose Nord Stream on grounds of Russian concerns, but also that it was ridiculous to believe Nord Stream interests might sabotage Germany's willingness to support its European neighbors security if Russia did do something stupid. Both of these concerns were validated by the German response to Putin.
If anything, rather than a snub the non-cooperation was both a retaliation and a warning. Germany could not defend Nord Stream when it was warned in advance. Germany could not pursue Nord Stream saboteurs without the cooperation of its neighbors in the present. And Germany would not be able to protect any future Nord Stream in the future, if it disregarded its neighbors security concerns. The Nord Stream concept was not a German-Russia bilateral concern. It was a concern of far more people, and far more veto authorities in practice.
Germany was never so adored and/or feared that it could expect other countries to defend Germany's privileged energy relationship with Russian at their own expense. If that surprised the Germans, well it wasn't for a lack of being warned.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Truly, Antony Blinkin's word is Ukrainian law forever into the future, and 'the State Department isn't going to lean on them' is the same as 'State Department approval.'
It's worth... well, there's nothing to forgive, so no fairness needed from me since no offense was taken. I am not making a critique about the interview in any sense, merely raising an eyebrow at the pitch / appeal to the audience. Which is not suspected of being Tracing's responsibility in any way.
Maybe it's mentioned in the video and not caught in the text.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Looks like the Count got himself banned over 100% fake news.
Something something karma and bearing false witness, I suppose. I've no intention to tease him with this if / when he returns, but I imagine this will be a poke back he should be expecting for the rest of his time on the Motte going forward.
It's an odd shill (edit- as in, advertisement/solicitation) that advertises on the Motte with a claim that the Motte is a subject of conversation, but links to an article transcript that doesn't include the word.
The last year and a half really have come across has a throughput increase (scaling up results to input increases, but roughly the same proportions as smaller inputs) rather than compounding advantage. Typically a compounding position of advantage decreases military casualties because you mitigate the ability of the enemy to retaliate. Throughput just increases output gains by increasing input costs, but if you later decrease the input rate the outputs will still correspondingly diminish rather than continue at a steady rate (i.e. coasting to continued success). It's going from spending 3 to 6 in order to receive 8 instead of 4 on the back end. Bigger is better, yeah, but normally success on overmatch would be compounding, such that spending 6 should get you 10 instead.
The Russians can grind on for months and even years yet, but as long as the Ukrainians can match that- and that is the implication of matching the throughput scaling as they have so far- it's not really an enduring advantage if your limiting factor is more economic-political than literal manpower. Given the role Russian recruitment costs have played in the budget, and the tapering factor of early mobilization advantages, Russia is more likely to run out of men it can afford to bribe to volunteer before it conquers the four provinces.
That still leaves mass conscription down the road, but whatever you think of the political costs that Putin demonstratably disliked more than the current system, the political costs will be likely be worse if low-fiscal-cost conscription is scaled after years of volunteers got paid oodles, thus denying the new recruits even the pretense of equivalent bains, and after a war-recession has gotten underway.
I am not the biggest fan of social contract stability theory, and I believe I've said in the past that Putin can shoot down a revolt, but the man is a notorious strategic procrastinator and has a history of deferring this exact sort of choice.
I'm not convinced Hersh has any particular credibility in the eyes of the public as large. There's a reason vouches for his career credibility tend to reach back 20 years or more, rather than since the Bush administration. Even the man's more ardent defenders during the Ukraine story were leaning back to the Vietnam War reputation than his post-9-11 middle east pattern.
At least on a public/policy level, Hersh got dropped like most of the Bush-era anti-war movement when it became clear he was going to make the same sort of claims and accusations against Obama and the Democrats as he did against Bush. The sort of 'we could believe it' credibility that that was leant when he was making various accusations against Bush as a warmonger, or that Reagan was the real villains for Pakistan going nuclear, dried up when he was blaming the Syrian rebels for Assad's gas attacks, and accusing Obama of fabricating the Bin Laden raid. Abu Ghraib was real, but the man made so many unfalsifiable claims, and then claimed other things false, that even his fans tend to mumble mumble over the stuff since 2004.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I am on record for doubting the US navy could/would attack and seize the shipping vessels of much of the world that would still prefer to trade with China, but I will admit to chuckling at your description.
Seymore Hersh did a long and somewhat fanciful article claiming that the US bombed the Nord Stream Pipeline.
It was sourced to anonymous intelligence sources, but reflected a misunderstanding of how the US government functions (claiming certain parts of the US military did it to avoid the Congressional oversight that is also present under a different channel for the alleged organization, i.e. not avoiding Congressional oversight), operational security (claiming simultaneously that significant parts of the US government couldn't be told but also sharing it with key NATO allies), munition physics (claiming an airdrop of a precision submersible munition rather at altitudes that would break it, rather than lowering off a boat), and planning timelines (the bomb had to be planted during a major NATO exercise, when many NATO witnesses would be present, but detonated months later lest the Russians discover it, rather than use a boat closer to the time), and signal technology (the bomb had to be detonated by a signal from a military aircraft that would be conspicuously flying overhead, rather than a boat sailing through the area). It also relied on falsifiable claims (no NATO aircraft was observed launching from or flying around the places and times he claimed) that were falsified shortly after publication, unfalsifiable claims of vague, unspecified, but undefeatable Russian underwater sensors that would detect the bombs a few months after the bomb was planted but not the months prior, and a someone exaggerated view of the technical requirements of blowing up the pipeline (minimal requirements being professional swimming gear and a commercially available boat).
Whether you believe the US bombed the pipeline or not- and there have been people who insisted with straight faces no one else possibly could have the means or motive to and that even considering anyone other than the Americans was a self-evident waste of time- Hersh's account was an incompetent way to go about it. It was incompetence that treated itself seriously, presenting what it clearly thought was a super-professional and competent means that only the Americans could have achieved. In practice it was more Hollywood fantasy than Tom Clancy technothriller in quality, not least because Hersh had a bizar insistence of using any other method of delivery or initiation for a water-based explosive to a target in the water other than use a boat.
It also was not followed in the months or years since by any supporting revelations by any of the many motivated parties who would happily have the Americans receive the blame. Instead, eventually, Germany put the equivalent of an arrest warrant for Ukrainians. Coincidentally, the same week, the Wall Street Journal published an account blaming the Ukrainians.
(They rented a boat.)
The erosion of shame as a social force is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidencies.
An older one from earlier this year, but applicable. Core argument is that Trump is a product of this trend, not the cause.
US State Department is not adding here much, elections are suspended in accordance of Ukrainian constitution on account of having a war
Remember, the US is the hyperagent. Other countries don't make and execute their own decisions- other countries either act in accordance with American permission, or are forced to respond to American impositions.
My knowledge of Ukr politics begins and ends at ‘I support whatever the UGCC wants’, so this is an honest question- does Zaluzhny
I'd preface my response by noting that after Hershs' earlier farce regarding the Nord Stream Bombing, in which he favored a Russian-backed conspiracy theory of perpetrator, with his own falsifiable and falsified narrative, over the implicit and explicit attribution of the European governments including Germany itself (i.e. Ukraine did it), I'd be very, very skeptical of any claim by him for insider insight. Hersh may have his sources, but I would not trust they are sources actually inside the American administration... and if they were, they'd be exceptionally desperate- and motivated- to publicize them via Hersh rather than someone else.
Hersh is a crank when it comes to the Ukraine War. More to the point, Hersh is the sort of person that majority of Trump's Republican administration considers a crank on the Ukraine War. You don't go to the other tribe's conspiracy cranks to launder your own efforts on the subject, unless you want to discredit the premise.
have sufficient internal support to force through a peace agreement over the nationalist’s objections,
Almost certainly not.
The biggest obstacle to a Russia-Ukraine peace agreement isn't the objection of 'the nationalists' to peace, but rather the 'everyone who suspects Putin would attack again' caucus to 'a peace agreement that sets conditions for Putin to attack again.' This is the reminder that the Ukraine invasion was the third, arguably fourth, continuation war by Russia against Ukraine since the invasion of Crimea. The first was the Nova Russia astroturf revolt, the second was the conventional military intervention to keep the separatist republics from falling, and the arguable third was efforts in between those, distinct from the attempts to coerce Ukraine into a state of constitutional paralysis by the inter-war negotiations.
There is no politically viable coalition of people who want to make a deal for the sake of a deal, particularly when Russia keeps claiming that a required condition of the deal is the demilitarization of Ukraine's capabilities to fight back. Just at a game theory level, such a demand requires a certain level of trust in the other player, and in this context- and for the foreseeable future- that other player is Putin.
or to expand the draft until Ukraine is fully staffed again?
Also almost certainly not.
For one thing, there's no particular standard of 'fully staffed.' The only time Ukraine has a meaningful manpower advantage- i.e. 'fully staffed- was pre-mobilization in the first year. This was a result of policy decisions by the Kremlin, not Ukrainian draft politics.
Ukraine has manpower challenges- though you probably look more towards Michael Koffman than anyone posting on the Motte this year for insight on that- but one dynamics of the situation is that the current issues aren't even something that forcibly conscripting more bodies would 'fix.' One of the reasons here is that the technology adaption/evolution of drones has limited the ability of both sides to actually maintain 'full' front line units. The drone dynamics are complicated, but the short end is that the Ukrainians are in some respects doing better defending longer terrain with fewer forces than would normally be considered 'full.'
But the flipside is that this is also applying to the Russians for much the same reason- drones are increasingly too common to allow maintaining massed forces on the battle line, and the more drones there are, the smaller that mass that can stand by gets. This is why the Russians have been getting increasingly effective use out of YOLO motorcycle/golf car assaults as with motorized/mechanized assalts. It's not that either is good, but both are bad, and the speed of the motorized assaults is enough to mitigate the exposure before the Ukrainian infantry can counter attack. Would more Ukrainian infantry in the trenches to resist attacks against the trenches be better? Sure. But it would also mean more exposure to the drones in those contexts.
I'm not claiming that the Ukrainian shortage is secretly an advantage, but it's a disadvantage that mitigates the cost of another significant risk factor. Which is not exactly unknown in conflicts.
Could that be the reason?
Also a third almost certainly not, though I'll pivot here to choosing to interpret 'the reason' as 'motive for the story.'
Hersh aside, the motive for an anti-Zelensky story 'now'- as in, 'why now?'- would probably be the consequence of internal Trump administration politics, as the losers of the cut-all-aid-from-Ukraine caucus shake some trees in hopes something falls. The biggest change in the Ukraine situation recently isn't that the military situation has gotten worse, but rather that the Trump administration relationship got better, and so negative press is part of that 'don't just do nothing, do something' response of people trying to shape an emerging policy.
I do owe a follow-up on late last year / early this year predictions, but one of the bigger predictions I made earlier this year was that the Trump-European relationship was primed to go transactional.
From February-
Low and behold, that's begun to happen, as the recent NATO summit that expanded the NATO spending target to 5% in a yuge win for Trump, also explicitly counts aid to Ukraine as counting for that limit. In turn, and around the time Trump made his more recent 50-day demand towards Putin,* Germany announced it was going to finance Patriots from the US for Ukraine. Europeans can win points from Trump, reduce Trumpian critcism of their defense investments, support Ukraine, and secure the American material that they themselves do not have, all while getting to claim they are meeting their NATO requirements by... buying American stuff for Ukraine.
In other words, the US-European relationship towards Ukraine is shifting from where where Biden donated aid to Ukraine, to where Trump sells aid to Europe who buys for Ukraine. Remember that the Russian theory of victory since choosing to prolong the war was that Ukraine would be cut off from American-European military-economic support and thus fall victim to the greater Russian military-economic mass. Having a transition where the rich Europeans using their economic resources to continue the supply of American munitions is 'better' for Russia than the US outright donating them outright, but it's a Bad Thing for Russian sustainability in the long term (as in- more than 3 years out).
But this is also a Bad Thing, specifically, for a small subset of the anti-Ukraine trump administration caucus who didn't want any military production to go towards Ukraine, at all, in favor of supporting the China buildup (or, more pressingly, Israel and the Middle East). This line of argument is against any diversion of material capabilities, including that which is sold rather than donated, on the urgency-of-China argument.
Well, that caucus has lost the bureucratic fight, and defying Trump openly is political suicide. Therefore, how do you try to undercut a commercial diversion? Lead corruption allegation #XYZ and hope it sticks, reducing / shrinking sales on corruption grounds.
Notably, however- and more relevant for some of the potential media planting efforts- it's not just inner-Trump admin dissidents who don't like the policy change. France and Italy have signaled dislike of the US policy change, less because they don't want to support Ukraine and more that they (especially France) don't want European money going to buy American weapons for Ukraine, as opposed to European (especially French) weapons. If Zelensky is particularly happy with the Trump development- and to be fair it's probably impossible to tell a sincerely happy Zelensky to one desperate to avoid a repetition of the White House blowup conference- then perhaps an alternative to Zelensky would also be more willing to entertain alternative (and long lead time) deliveries of military aid in a context.
I doubt it- I think this is not much ado about even less- but pettier axes have been ground.
*The 50 day puts us towards the end of the fighting season... which is about the point we'd see a summer/fall offensive peter out for the year regardless before the mud and winter season reset. I'll expect pro-forma negotiations there regardless, and that'll probably be when I do a Ukraine review of predictions.
As for Zelenskyy, making high risk maneuvers is far from unknown when leaders sense a direct threat to their power.
I'm not clear what high-risk maneuvers you think Zelensky is making in this context, but if this is referring to any given part of the OP, I wouldn't worry.
I would generally dismiss the objectivity the OP's framing of just about everything to do with Ukraine's negotiations, ranging from the 'surprising move' (something that has been repeatedly going on since the first Trump-Zelensky summit is not a surprise), to attribution of effort (the summer negotiations were not a result of Ukrainian 'trying,' but rather blatant coercion from the US), to even attribution of origin (the 30 day ceasefire demand did not originate from Ukraine, but was Zelensky echoing/supporting a Trump administration position on immediate cease fire).
Then again, I admittedly do have a flinch when I see someone unironically use 'regime journalist' as a way to discredit an objection to a known conspiracy theorist. Nor do I put much stock in the latest iteration of 'Ukraine is about to militarily collapse any month now' narrative that is over three years old at this point.
As far as Zelensky's political risk goes, I'd say his position has gotten stronger, not riskier, since this spring summer. Zelensky went from being 'the President who personally lost almost all American military support' to 'the President who made the American military support less generous but more stable, while offsetting the direct cost to us.' I can see a case for a palace coup against the former, but far fewer people within Ukraine will take the risks to reverse the later. Particularly if the nominal basis for removal- 'we must remove the appearance of corruption'- is to be done by...
Well, does anyone actually believe that the sort of people who think Ukraine shouldn't be given aid on account of corruption are going to be more forthcoming after an easy-to-characterize-as-corrupt palace coup?
(Curse you for directly asking for my opinion! I've been trying to Ukraine War post less this year.)
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
On one hand, thank you for further validating my already poor opinion of him. On the other hand... I'm sorry you have felt it useful to have that link on hand.
Am I missing something here?
Imagine someone who not only unironically uses the term human capital, and unambiguously considers themselves as higher human capital, but who also conspicuously talks about how the Republican Party has really gone downhill since it started catering to the tastes of those lower human capital against the advice of better human capital.
iprayiam3's characterization of Turok can apply to Hanania in general- someone who is generally upset that their intelligence and self-evident superiority aren't met with the deference and leadership they feel is their due. You can talk about Hanania, the social critic, but what that misses is Hanania, the would-be luminary / public intellectual / movement leader. Critics are common, but it takes a special sort of Influencer who is Intelligent enough to deserve to be listened to.
In mechanical terms, Hanania is/was a journalist who gained noticed in the 2000s by writing for far-right publications (that he has since disavowed). But from those publications he made connections with the sort of people who read them and more mainstream right-leaning media to sometimes write for those, and in turn use those as a further spring board. Hanania is a sharp enough wit that he can stand out by poking midwits, and enjoys it for both its own sake and the adulation it brings from those happy to see the victims pricked.
IIRC, part of what made Hanania stand out / get excommunicated from the respectable media (besides his not-quite-secret further right entry point) was that his schitk of being an angry libertarian also made him one of the earlier public critics/opponents to what we now call DEI. Hanania was always something of a shock-jock writer, picking arguments to provoke, and mocking woke / social justice / DEI efforts was something where he was ahead of the crowd. That boosted his credentials in some circles, especially those more interested in racial-IQ science, in the 'only Diogenes is wise enough to tell it like it is' sense. However, intellectual humility is not exactly something Hanania gets accused of having too much of, and he (or at least his support group) would probably tend to fixate more on Diogenes' acerbic wit and less on the joke.
This comes to the political pretensions... not really ever, but the closest in the the early-mid-2010s, pre-Trump. Trump rose because there was a power vacuum of voter base trust in the Republican establishment. That vacuume was because the Republican base disagreed with the Democrats on a lot and wanted someone who would fight. Hanania was also someone who disagreed with the Democrats on the lot and wanted to fight. This is a now decade-old vibe, but there was a vibe that Republicans were looking for something different than the stale old Bush-era republicans. (Memorably, the Republican Party elite had been taking the lesson via post-Romney autopsy that the change they needed was to become more like the Democrats. This, uh, didn't work out for that wing of the party.)
The fact that the Republican base went with someone like Trump, rather than someone like more Hanania-adjacent, is somewhere between 'something that will never be forgiven' and 'It's not like I wanted to be popular with you' and 'I knew you were all idiots anyway.'
I don't know / recall if Hanania ever made an overt play for Republican Party influence, but he's been bitter about it in ways that are more akin to a spurned would-be-lover than an outsider. Hananaia has written about how conservative republicans are worse (in some ways) than democrats, about how Trump has a stranglehold on the party, about how the party has become the low human capital party (since Trump), etc. etc. The sort of thing that gives the impression that Hanania sure would think it was a good thing if the Republican party was replaced with people who met Hanania's standards, which of course includes agreeing with Hanania, and would naturally elevating Hanania-like people like Hanania into policy power. (But, of course, he'd never be so low-brow as to directly appeal to his own greatness.)
Despite that, Hananaians occasionally make scratches, or at least associations, with political relevance. Hanania was allegedly / accused of contributing to the Project 2025 republican wishlist / template that the Trump administration cribbed from for early policy priorities. At the same time (loosely / more recently), Hanania did a media tour publicly professing regret for ever voting for Trump (which, of course, was due to Hanania being insufficiently Hanania and taking his reasoning further). Hanania thus tries to shape Trumpian politics, while also keeping as far distance as he can. If Trump zigs, he will zag, and comment at length at how bad zigging is.
Hananaia acts, in other words, loosely like a would-be government-in-exile hoping that, should the hated regime fall, people will naturally look to them for guidance. However, this is undercut a bit by how the would-be government is led by a hated aristocrat who openly loathes the peasants, and hardly loved in return. Still, he's useful enough to enough people that he continues to exist.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
'There is now way Trump will get away with [latest thing] this time!'
Not going to lie, mate, you are kind of all over the place on this. You say that this suit 'just put things into overdrive,' but your conclusion is really just jamming a lot of different concept that could be these [things].
In paragraph one, it was the survival (preferably end) of Trump's political career. In paragraph two it... could just as well apply to a thing you characterize as would have been a non-scandal if only Trump waited a weekend? Or maybe the Murdoch trap. You kind of veer from one into the other. By paragraph three, it's the terrible prospects of a disposition of a guy who (repeatedly) had (multiple) hostile prosecutions and investigations leak unflattering things for decades. Come paragraph four, it's how bad the optics will be for a guy who won his first presidential election after an audiotape of 'grab them by the pussy,' followed by a technically-not-treason conspiracy, and, well, way too many bad optics to list.
So when you throw in things like this-
But Trump is impulsive, and wasn't going to wait until Monday to file, wasn't going to give himself a chance to cool down. Get it out Friday. Now he has opened himself up to a world of hurt that he couldn't imagine beforehand.
Dude. Dude.
This is a guy who has been variously accused of rape, infidelity, insurrection, and racism in various courts for the better part of a decade. He was the target of a historically unprecedented fraud prosecution in which the largest fraud fine in New York history was leveled against him despite the victim testifying on his behalf. So many novel legal theories have been used against him that entire aspects of constitutional law have been developed to manage it. There have been multiple government conspiracies that we know about that aimed to hurt him in court.
I am going to go on a slight limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a better idea of the world of hurt that comes with court cases than you do.
This is fundamentally a categorization boundary difference. This is the sort of thing where we may simply have different categorization hierarchies/boundaries.
What you quoted is / was intended to be a reminder against the fallacy of composition without calling it such, since overtly calling on a fallacy can come off as an attack / belittlement. Which was not the intent, but lost some clarity, particularly on the categorization hierarchy.
The fallacy of composition is the error in which what true for a part of a whole is assumed to be true for the whole. It is a common categorization error when sub-sets are conflated with broader overarching categories. What is true for a subset (all dogs are mammals, A = B) does not necessarily apply to the over set (all mammals are not dogs, B =/= A). (Part of the error is that it's not actual the same category in both sets, as 'mammals' and 'all mammals' are not the exact same group- that is, they are not both 'B'.)
Reciprocal relationships are a category of relationships, distinct from other, non-reciprocal relationships. It itself is a subcategory of [relationships]. Reciprocal relationships as a (sub-)category can in turn be broken down into further sub-categories.
Obligation-based and transactional relationships are subcategories of reciprocal relationships. There are additional subcategories as well, types of reciprocity that are also not obligatory or transactional. Mutual love and mutual hatred are both reciprocated relationships that have no intrinsic obligatory or transactional element. More can be found.
The fallacy of composition limits the application of any of them to characterizing the others- what is true for a part (a specific subcategory) is not true for the whole (other subcategories / the broader category). What is true for one subcategory (god's relationship with man is not a specific type of reciprocal relationship, i.e. not a transactional relationship) does not disprove another subcategory, or the overarching category.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I agree that often duty based ethics is framed in terms of mutual duty. But @Clementine is still correct with the assertion that duty without reciprocity is virtue, not exploitation. You may not be required to discharge your duty towards someone who doesn't discharge theirs to you, but it's still praiseworthy to do so. For example, Judaism and Christianity both depict how God continuously acts benevolent towards humanity despite them not deserving it. This isn't framed as "God is a sucker", but rather as God being the exemplar of virtue whom we should strive to imitate. Not all religions frame things that way, of course, but when you have some 3000 years of one religious tradition which does, it seems fair to call that just as established as the reciprocal duty that you outlined.
This misses the argument previously made.
Religiously-derived deontological ethics aren't a duty towards the person you are doing the virtue towards, but the duty to the god who sets the paradigm of right and wrong action. Other people don't need to reciprocate your execution of virtue because the duty relationship isn't to them, but to god. The execution isn't praiseworthy because the recipients or human observers praise it, but because the worthiness is set by god regardless of the beneficiary.
In turn, the sucker being raised is the deontologist if god does not exist, not god if the deontologist fails. Being the root of deontological legitimacy challenges any premise of obligation to god by those without deontology-setting power, but people who do something on the grounds that derive from god are being suckers if that belief was always wrong, regardless of how socially commendable their niceness may be.
edit: forgot to mention that your explanation of Christianity is very much not how it works, and is in fact a heresy! Salvation is explicitly not something that God owes us because we upheld his law, but rather is a freely given gift. Thus our only choice is to say "yes, I accept" (out of which comes trying to uphold God's laws, again not out of obligation but out of love for him), or to reject his gift (because we would rather do our own thing). Salvation as a gift rather than earned by our conduct is a core tenet of Christianity.
Reciprocal relationships are not the same as obligation relationships, much as they are not synonymous with transactional relationships. The duty (deontological obligations) to god for freely given grace is still a reciprocal relationship, even though it is not a transactional relationship nor does is obligate god in return.
Dean
Flairless
2mo ago
And rightly so. Please keep that link and reminder on hand. It is certainly a good example of AlexanderTurok's bad faith characterizations of past arguments.
Lots of duty based systems eg confucianism lasted long term. I'm not sure how well adapted they are to modern day life, where a lot of the scaffolding¹ that helps maintain the systems is crumbling. But these systems usually specifically have moral parables about people behaving virtuously — dutifully — even when they're reciprocated not just with nothing but with active ingratitude and disrespect.
Confucianism is an explicitly reciprocal duty-based system. It was often explicitly modeled both in terms of father-son relationships, where the son's obedience to the father is contingent on the father being a virtuous enough patriarch to be worth respecting, and between subject and sovereign, where a sovereign's failure to maintain virtue is the basis for losing the mandate of heaven and being replaced by someone else who will appriopriately fill the duties required.
Confucianism and deontological religions have a commonality in that the duty-based system is based on relationships that are reciprocal. Religious deontology works from the premise of virtue's relationship, and thus duty to, one's own god. Doing so brings you closer to your god / earns good karma / etc. from your metaphysical duty-obligator. More secular Confucianism works from the premise of the duty to natural relationship of [child] and [parent]. Doing so brings you more harmonious relationships with the other part of the relationships.
No major deontology system has ever worked from a premise of a duty towards an action outside of the context of the relationship. Even when the Christians preach charity to one's enemies, it is based from the premise of the relationship of the charitable practioner to their god. When the virtue-ethicists like Aristotle talk about balancing bravery between cowardliness and foolhardiness, it is in the context of its effects on, and the relationship of the practitioner to, others.
Dean
Flairless
2mo ago
If you ignore a few millennia of cultural understanding of duty-as-virtue ethics, perhaps.
Duty-based ethics, aka deontological ethics, are highly reciprocal. This is especially true in the western tradition, due to the derivation of why there is a duty and to who. Namely- because God. Hence why deontological ethics and religious ethics are so intertwined across history, since the fundamental question of any duty-based ethical system leads to 'according to who?' whenever a secular authority demands dutiful obedience.
A god isn't required to be that 'who,' but it is the moral authority higher than any king to make those demands for obedience something more than arbitrary human with thugs and clubs. In turn, religious deontologies are incredibly reciprocal- you do your duty unto God, which can entail more worldly obediences as well, and you go to heaven. Defy your duties, and you are separated from God / go to Hell / bad karma happens. God's love may be unconditional, but the state of grace of being close to god is not. Your reciprocal gain for doing the right thing is that your soul will go the right place, no matter the worldly harm you may suffer. This isn't exactly unique to Christianity either, as a brief review of any karmic system metastructure can show.
But the element of God isn't required for reciprocity either. One of the most successful non-theistic deontological ethic systems about duty, Confucianism, is explicitly reciprocal. It appeals to a 'natural' relationship rather than a deific basis, namely the relationship of fathers to sons, but this duty system is obligations on both parties, the failure of which on either part can justify action by the other. A son who lacks filial piety may be disciplined. A king who lacks virtue loses the mandate of heaven and may be replaced.
The non-abrahamic reciprocal duty also goes back from east to west to the foundational civilizing force of western antiquity, Rome. In Rome, the patron-client relationship wasn't a brief transactional relationship of bribes or business, but a fundamental social institution. Patrons provided support and benefits to their clients, from nepotistic favors to representing them in court or assisting in arranging marriages, and in turn the clients owed loyalty, respect, and support... so long as the Patron provided. But if the Patron didn't, then another, more worthy, Patron could be shifted too. This was a bedrock arrangement of not only rome itself, but everywhere Rome dominated, as this was the relationship deliberately pursued between Rome and its clients/allies/conquests/etc. And it was part of a broader mindset that didn't limit this to the secular, but the religious practices as well, where Roman polytheism was part of a reciprocal 'if we don't show piety we will be punished' leading to 'show piety for divine favor' paradigm.
All of these duty traditions far, far, far predate any contemporary notion of 'rights-based mindset.' The Jews were in covenant long before millennia before any enlightenment philosophers were quibling over human rights. The enlightenment built from the corpse of the Roman reciprocity. The Confusicians and the Hindus and more didn't need their example to figure out their own thing.
Duty-based ethic systems are highly reciprocal.
Dean
Flairless
2mo ago
She's a member of the United States Cabinet!
Which is a collection of individuals with distinct and often contrasting opinions, not a hive mind, or an avatar summoned from the collective unconscious of parts of the electorate.
You may not think it's true, but you certainly act as if it's true.
We can all look at your posting history and note that you are not spending your time denouncing or distancing yourself from any given stupid comment by any given political figure. Despite your constant failure to distance yourself from the infinite stupidity of the universe, it would, in fact, be unreasonable to claim that said stupidity represents you to any relevant degree.
Thank you for demonstrating a failure mode.
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