ResoluteRaven
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User ID: 867
ResoluteRaven
15hr ago
You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.
This gets at an interesting difference between the western and Russian (or at least Putin's) definitions of Nazi. In the west, the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to exterminate Jews, and any feelings they have about Russians are orthogonal to their Naziness, whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people), and it's their feelings about Jews that are orthogonal to their Naziness.
Now, I would say that the former definition is closer to historical reality than the latter, but this misunderstanding is why we in the west have been bemused by speeches about the "denazification" of a country with a Jewish president. Moreover, your typical Ukrainian Neo-Nazi probably ended up that way because he has heard all his life from the Russians that Nazis are people who hate Russians, and since he does in fact hate Russians he figures he might as well put on the uniform and become more intimidating to his enemies.
ResoluteRaven
15hr ago
If a country in Sub-Saharan Africa or any other region with reportedly lower intelligence ever catches up economically to the west without natural resource shortcuts such as oil or rare metals I would see that as proof either that we are not measuring intelligence correctly or that intelligence differences between populations are not relevant to things I actually care about.
ResoluteRaven
2d ago
If the question is simply whether these factors exist and are harmful in certain contexts, then I don't think anyone can deny that. However, I think anyone claiming that they are responsible for an increase in depression or chronic health conditions over time is incorrect, as homes have gotten substantially cleaner and better ventilated over the past century in most countries and the general shittiness everyone seems to feel these days has alternative psychological and sociological explanations that others have outlined downthread.
ResoluteRaven
3d ago
What would "postnational" mean without reference to some non-arbitrary, non-"I'm-not-touching-you" definition of Canadians? Who or what is sovereign on Trudeau's definition? Trudeau?
Presumably Canadian citizens, the rules for becoming one which are determined by the elected representatives of the current citizenry. Could such rules be considered arbitrary? Sure, but I think you need more than that to claim that they are illegitimate e.g. you can argue that the representatives were not enacting the will of the citizens, you can argue against democracy as a process for deciding questions of citizenship, etc. Also, if Canada had really ever been a single nation they would be speaking English in Quebec.
ResoluteRaven
3d ago
Rome was quite stingy with offering citizenship.
While they were in most respects stingy by modern standards, the fact that they had any form of naturalization at all was a radical break from all of their Mediterranean neighbors e.g. Athens where only people with two citizen parents were citizens themselves or Sparta with its permanent helot underclass, and this contributed to Roman military dominance as they were able to radically increase their available manpower over time. I also think the sort of mass granting of citizenship to allies as a reward for military service that Rome engaged in would be seen as radical even today, something akin to the US giving all inhabitants of Sonora citizenship in exchange for them suppressing the cartels (the closest modern equivalent might be the French Foreign Legion, which is relatively small).
Rome was ascendant when it was a nation state composed of Romans.
If we're going by the standard chronology, where the zenith of Roman power is the death of Trajan in 117 AD, then I don't see how this is true. 2 of the 5 Good Emperors were Iberians and no one seems to have cared, not to mention the long string of Illyrian emperors who ended the third century crises and founded one, if not the greatest of Roman cities i.e. Constantinople. On that note, the fact that a bunch of Greeks went around for a thousand years calling themselves Romans seems evidence enough of the assimilatory power of Roman institutions (interestingly enough these Romans functioned more and more like a nation as they lost territory and became weaker, but it certainly wasn't the same as the original nation).
ResoluteRaven
3d ago
A post-national state does not have a people, it has a territory.
Strictly speaking, a post-national state need only lack a people defined by common birth or shared ancestry, and can have one defined in other ways. One can argue that nation-states are a superior form of social organization to those other ways, but they are neither untried nor historically novel (e.g. Rome, Islam).
ResoluteRaven
5d ago
France
Macron dissolved the national assembly and called a snap election after being clobbered by the National Front Rally in the EU parliament, which I didn't know until now was a thing he could do. Considering what's happening across the channel as well this is definitely shaping up to be a year of major political shakeups across Europe.
Gaza
Israel managed to rescue four hostages from Hamas. Thankfully they didn't shoot them by accident this time.
Iran
A list of candidates to replace the late President Raisi has been approved by Iranian religious authorities. None of them are familiar to me, but the claim is that they are sticking to religious conservatives as one might expect.
Burkina Faso
Russia's foreign minister Lavrov took a trip to Africa recently, pledging military support for anti-insurgency operations in several nations as part of the Wager Group's Russian Africa Corps' growing presence across the continent that is securing vital mineral and political (i.e. UN votes) resources and displacing western nations (France in particular) that used to fill this role.
ResoluteRaven
5d ago
I know several people whose fathers were in their 50's and mothers were ~40 when they were born, some of them being the youngest sibling of a large number and others being the only child. The latter sort might be a bit more socially awkward than normal, but that seems to be more from similarity to their parents than anything else. I would say the main concern in such a situation is the child having to care for their elderly parents earlier than the norm, but apart from that there are no major issues.
ResoluteRaven
5d ago
Your taste is not atypical for someone raised in or around immigrant enclaves where disdain for "white people food" is quite common, but less so for someone that grew up eating and therefore has at least some childhood nostalgia bound up with said food. All the same I think Western food is too broad of a category to dismiss, as even limiting ourselves to the US we have regional cuisines or styles of preparation (Cajun, Southern barbecue, Southwestern) that can put up a decent fight against what China or India has to offer.
As far as explanations for why people prefer the latter, one involves the industrialization of food production, which over time transforms meals from family gatherings where a peasant grandmother slaves for hours over a pot to squeeze every last drop of flavor out of rare and precious ingredients into mass-produced microwaveable slop that people eat by themselves solely for sustenance and not enjoyment (and this is not just in western countries; the food that the typical Japanese person eats every day is also to my eyes bland and unappetizing compared to the Korean or Chinese equivalent, since the latter two developed later), and the second is that you can usually get a better deal eating at a restaurant owned by a poor immigrant than one owned by a local i.e. why would I pay $20 for a craft burger and fries or a single appetizer at a good Italian place when I could get a giant bowl of pho for $12 (your local prices may vary proportionally) instead?
I wouldn't be surprised if the way people speak or express emotions on their face over a lifetime affects how they look, as well as things like diet and lifestyle, all of which will differ between countries. Rishi Sunak for example has a face that looks very British to me in a way I can't fully articulate, despite his ethnic background.
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