MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
No.
User ID: 58
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
8d ago
I was 16, and in journalism class.
As everyone was glued to the TV, my instinct was to write a poem. I did so in the moment and recited it quietly, without being asked, in front of the class. I don’t remember the poem but it had an impact and I wish I had saved it. My teacher was army national guard, and we talked one on one four about 45 minutes.
My first instinct was to join the marines but I was talked out of it by my parents. Within a year I was living in the Middle East.
9/11 had a huge impact on my life. I learned a new language, learned about Islam and deepened my knowledge of Christianity and Judaism. Poured myself into learning the history and culture of the region. Became more religious at first and eventually became an atheist and remained that way for almost my entire adult life. Studied history of the region in university.
It set up an odd dynamic to my life given the changes in culture that have happened in the last 25 years. People who know me even a bit know that I’m very educated, both formally and self taught, in multiple areas that relate to the region and its people and its enduring legacy.
They, being largely “well-meaning” liberals tend to think because of my expertise and first hand experience assume I tend to have sympathy towards certain groups and movements.
They are extremely mistaken, as if they have trouble conceiving of someone increasing their dislike of various groups in line with increased knowledge.
I grew very quickly to detest Islam, even as I got along very well with individual Muslims, and had an entirely pessimistic view of the Muslim Middle East and the greater Umaah.
I noticed how it increasingly alienated me from other atheists who only ever seemed to criticize Christianity. I noticed how cowardly they were as atrocities in the name of Islam continually stacked up and up into the millions of casualties in the decade that followed and these people basically said nothing.
Honestly, knowing what I know now, if I was sent back in time to Sept 12th, 2001 in a bid to change the course of history I’d be a nonstop advocate for nuking the Kabaah.
I feel like it would have saved my fellow Americans a lot of trouble in the long run, even if we couldn’t have brought ourselves to do it out of some misguided sense of decency.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9d ago
This somehow tracks on an historical level and yet it seems off.
I know that a homogeneous society can more easily sustain more social spending and higher taxation for public goods but I think that doesn’t necessarily translate into fondness for communism or more importantly, the ability of a communist party to successfully launch a coup.
And America has a lot of built up anti-communist antibodies in the form of our religion, our civic institutions, the shape and scope of our landmass, etc.
Jacobin-like Argentina is the closer analogue. Argentina was wealthier than France at the beginning of the 20th century and absolutely imploded in slow motion until it was an utter backwater and stayed that way and might continue to stay that way unless the supreme autist Milei actually gets a durable victory.
Argentine is almost entirely European and yet managed to fuck up an enormous economic lead and turned into a socialist shithole.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9d ago
This tweet encapsulated it perfectly:
The breakfast question for small government conservatives
"You live in a welfare state. Federal taxes are taken from you, spent, and wasted. Would you rather have the money given to your friends, or your enemies? Remember that the money will be wasted either way, you're not allowed to get it back, the money needs to be spent. The only thing you can decide is whether the money is given to your friends, or your enemies."
"But I don't want to live in a welfare state."
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
11d ago
For these reasons and more as an American I support eventually barring dual citizenship, or at the very least barring those who hold dual citizenship from holding office or voting until they formally renounce their other citizenship.
I think as a long term goal it’s one of only a handful of things that will be absolutely required to preserve the American dēmos and citizenship that actually has any meaning.
Religions can die. Countless religions lie in the trash heap of history. Even if it didn’t die completely, Zoroastrianism is no longer important.
Islam is much stronger but much more brittle than Judaism. I doubt they’d survive long after the destruction of their holy site. It’s a religion that’s much more “particular” than most in that it’s formally attached to a set of places and yet claims universality through historical conquest.
Islam can’t handle huge setbacks in the secular / physical world, it’s part of the reason 9/11 happened in the first place. It was almost like a violent outburst born in a fit of narcissistic rage on a societal level.
Ironically there was an Iraq war era general that I will paraphrase here: you pay the butchers bill up front or you pay it with interest over time. The network of Islamist parties in the decade after 9/11 were directly responsible for the butchery of millions of people, mostly Muslims.
Leveling Mecca and fatally humiliating an awful religion into obscurity seems very tempting given a full and honest accounting of the bloodshed directly caused by Islam in the 21st century.
The United States was explicitly modeled on the Roman republic, and this is one aspect of our pagan past I wish we would have the balls to recover: the ability to unashamedly and utterly crush our enemies without moralizing or hemming and hawing about it.
The whole world would turn against the US, you say? I say a US government acting in the best interests of its citizens would find that to be essentially inevitable, and the last 25 years have vindicated me.
If you put those that would have opposed a punitive war against Islamism directly after 9/11 and those “allies” who have been leeches and fair weather friends in the last 25 years into a Venn diagram it would be a goddamn circle.
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