Harlequin5942
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User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
23hr ago
Yes, to the point where "British citizen" (as distinguished from "British subject", which included anyone in the Empire/Dominions) is a fairly recent concept. Americans of a certain age (80+) will sometimes use "British subject" to mean "British citizen", maybe because the latter was not actually a thing when they were young.
Harlequin5942
23hr ago
That's not really 'Irish,' though.
They were in the eyes of Americans at the time, specifically Scotch-Irish. Also, Scots are Celts, though views about that at the time were sometimes complex.
Aside from their Catholicism, there was little to distinguish a typical Irishman from a typical Protestant Highlander. (Their languages would have been slightly different, but equally alien to an English American in 1850.)
Harlequin5942
1d ago
The Pope officially renounced it along with the entirety of mainstream Catholicism
Well, it wasn't just a single Pope who completed that process after WW2! ;)
Harlequin5942
1d ago
I’ve always been taught that anti-Catholic sentiment in America went hand-in-hand with nativism. The Catholics were from strange lands with strange customs like Ireland, Italy, and Poland.
Strange customs like the Irish? Three 19th century American Presidents were Irish, but they were Protestant Irish.
The main issue was that Catholics were seen as having a supra-nationalist loyalty to the Pope. Even in the 1960 election, Protestant figures like Billy Graham argued that JFK would take orders from the Pope. (The Pope couldn't even restrain JFK's sex life, let alone his policies.) There was also fear of Catholic schools and other sectarian institutiins, which even sought funding from Protestant taxpayers. The Catholic Church was also seen as too anti-black in the North (due to its silence on slavery) and too pro-black in the South (especially by the KKK).
Harlequin5942
1d ago
You need to consider demand for relocation as well as supply in the analysis. The expected gain in 1500 AD from moving from e.g. West Africa to Europe, given the risks and the relative differences in quality of life, were pretty small compared to the expected gain from moving in 2024. It wasn't like Europeans were fighting off hoards of African immigrants. And in 1900, what would the average African villager going to do in places where they don't speak the language, don't have much marketable skills, don't have immunity to local diseases, and don't have a welfare state to use?
In the Imperialist period, the transfer was the other way: hordes of European economic migrants swarming to the Americas and Africa.
In the UK, a lot of the black immigration was driven by things like African nurses coming over for work after 1945, during a period of labour shortages in the UK.
I would say that the key factors were (a) the Great Divergence in economic prosperity between the West and the Rest, due to the rise liberal capitalism in the former; (b) differences in population growth, and (c) better information transfer, so that even poor Africans could know that the poor in the West enjoyed a better standard of living.
Restrictions on immigration, with a few exceptions (like the White Australia policy) were less important than the above factors, I think.
Harlequin5942
1d ago
Then it wasn't something that men had as men, whereas women had their immunity from conscription as women. Different from today, but not that different, and no solace for an unmarried man who was conscripted (as many young, unmarried men were, sometimes violently e.g. press gangs).
Harlequin5942
2d ago
men had authority over women in return
That's vague. Men had a higher legal status in some respects and in some situations, but a typical man in a typical historical society had absolutely no authority over any women, except his wife and daughters if he had any.
Harlequin5942
3d ago
That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.
There was also a lot of confidence that liberal capitalist democracy was the natural state of countries, as long as there wasn't some special interfering factor. I think that didn't really start to fade until the Iraq War.
Harlequin5942
6d ago
But- formal one man rule seems to incentivize anti-corruption drives at the very least.
Not clear that's true. Insofar as power is concentrated, it is easier to identify who you have to bribe. Things like monopoly concessions in return for money (formal and informal) happened a lot in e.g. Elizabethan England, and (I am no expert) presumably other cases of one-man (male or female) rule. On the other hand, that could be attributed to the problems that feudal rulers had in obtaining tax revenues.
However, from an incentives standpoint, it seems that the more powerful the state and the more concentrated that power, the greater the gain and the lower the cost of outsiders corrupting those with power. That's leaving aside "power tends to corrupt, more power tends to corrupt more" considerations.
So that's your update after finding out that your image of "Netflix producing Americans vs. steel producing Russians" was wrong?
"Well, actually US steel production is not enough, because of this qualitative analysis I just developed. The US is entangled in the Middle East (unlike Russia?!)"?
The US spends 3.5% of GDP on defence, around the lowest in its history. For illustration, Russia had been spending 4.1%, but it is now increasing defence spending to 6%. The US is very far from exhausting its capacity to deal with military problems.
Harlequin5942
9d ago
Salami tactics. That was apparently what Putin was trying prior to 2022, but changed his mind for some reason, possibly because of Ukraine's arms buildup.
Harlequin5942
9d ago
when China is currently supplying Russia.
Are we talking about steel? Because the US also imports from China. And, if there wasn't the current glut in steel production, the US could outbid Russia easily.
People saying "if we don't stop him now, he'll take Poland" are fabulists. This is not a realistic scenario.
What about, "If we don't stop him now, he'll attack Ukraine again"?
Just because Russia can't beat Ukraine militarily now, doesn't mean that Putin can't try for a second bite in the future, with the same rationales.
Harlequin5942
10d ago
The only reason the West got sucked into the conflict in its current capacity is because Ukraine put up an impressive resistance
Was it that, or more that Russia is much more pathetic (and apathetic - just look at their public's reaction or the level of mobilisation/defence spending that Putin can muster) than anyone expected?
From what I have seen, it's not so much that Ukrainians have been fighting well, and more that Russia's ability to project power beyond its borders is almost completely gone. Once they could dominate Eastern Europe, now they take months of grinding to gain worthless plains within a country that they once lorded over directly.
When it comes to mass manufacturing pieces of steel financial hubs won't do well. The US sees itself as economically superior because smart americans work with insurance, investment banking and Netflix while Russians work in a tractor factory. The tractor factory will produce far more mortars than Netflix.
The US produces more steel than Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production
And "smart americans" can buy steel from the Chinese, who massively outproduce Russia (or the US).
The US is also a major tractor manufacturer and exporter, Russia is not: https://blog.howdeninsurance.co.uk/tractors-where-are-they-manufactured/ -------- though Russia does import a lot of tractors from countries with better tractor manufacturing industries: https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/russia-agribusiness
Just because the US outperforms Russia in service industries, it doesn't mean that the US doesn't ALSO outperform Russia in manufacturing.
Harlequin5942
10d ago
I believe that there are writers primarily motivated by money, but that's not the same as being emotionally uninvested in a story. (This is distinct from being passionate, in a strong sense, about the story.) However, yes, I think it's hard for someone to prove that they aren't emotionally invested at all. How does one prove such a thing? And is it really possible for an intelligent human to both understand a book like Crime and Punishment and read it and be emotionally indifferent to it?
Harlequin5942
10d ago
The former is definitely conceptually possible, but I am not sure it has ever happened. I think Dostoevsky claimed he was more or less a mercenary writer to pay off his debts, but I don't believe him.
Harlequin5942
10d ago
This is not to say that passion is a necessary component of great writing
Do you mean sufficient effect?
For Sonic fan fiction, I bring you the lowest depths to which the human mind and soul can sink: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LCWoZEXyGU0
Harlequin5942
11d ago
Suppose an American consulate were bombed by anybody, what would you expect the US response to be?
Let's imagine that Iran didn't just bomb a US embassy, but stormed it and took diplomats/civilians hostage. What would happen?
There's precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
The US response would probably be to tighten economic sanctions on Iran, but to avoid military escalation. As the Ukraine war shows, the US is very wary of escalating conflicts, even with second-tier powers like Russia or Iran.
For purchasing internationally (and thus for the arms industry) nominal GDP is more important. PPP is a better indicator of domestic prosperity. International suppliers care about what you can offer them at market exchange rates, they don't care about your domestic prices. If Israel can offer me $500 for some small electronics part and Iran can offer me $400, I don't care if it's cheaper to live in Iran.
Harlequin5942
16d ago
I'd be surprised if they thought of any nation that is not of immediate concern to them.
And very often not even then: https://youtube.com/@JustinAwad/videos
Harlequin5942
16d ago
Esteem/affirmation culture, in my view, lends itself far more to mere masturbation-by-proxy than a guilt or shame culture does.
Plausible and interesting. I shall look more into this issue.
Though I am not a Christian or against homosexual behaviour as such, I shall say this: their separation of (a) homosexual preferences from (b) homosexual behaviour ("It's ok to be born gay, as long as you don't do gay things" etc.) is already more sophisticated than many of the takes I hear from my students when debating this issues. Again, what people are vs. what they do.
Harlequin5942
16d ago
Agreed. The similarities between affirmation/esteem culture and guilt culture have probably been underinvestigated. I have a meta theory that many problems of human activity involve too much focus on what people ARE rather than what they DO. "Hate the sin, not the sinner" is once instance of moving in the right direction, but I think there are others, e.g. "Provide children - and people in general - approval for good things they accomplish, not for what they are."
(That's not to say that affirmation/esteem/guilt have no place in parenting, education etc.)
Harlequin5942
17d ago
I grew up in a relatively conservative community. There was one boy who, at age 4-ish, liked to dress in girl's outfits when we played dress-up games. He also liked some "girl's" toys, e.g. Polly Pocket. He was also fearful of competitive sports and tended to make friends better with girls rather than boys (I was an exception).
As often happens, he's just gay. He often finds it easier to identify with women and empathise with them, perhaps because he has more of a lady-brain (who knows?). People in this relatively conservative community generally ignored it, reasoning "He'll grow out of it," and they were right, since he is (99%) a typical adult guy these days.
The same thing happened with a girl in my neighbourhood, who just turned out to have a very active imagination as a child. She's now married to a man, with kids etc. She had a very religious family, who treated it as a game (like a child who decides that they are a dinosaur) and within a year she had forgotten even that she used to insist that she was a boy.
Kids are weird. Sometimes, it's because there is something deeply different about them. It's hard to know why, so it's best to enjoy the ride (within sensible boundaries e.g. keeping them from sexual experimentation) and offer them love throughout the process.
True to some extent, but people will tolerate terrible treatment if the price is right. Just look at migrant workers in the Gulf States.
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