Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
No, the major ones in the public imagination (Spain, Italy, Germany) were as much or more in reaction to powerful, organized, and street-level-thuggish communist parties in their countries than they were a backlash against old aristocracy. In fact, a major reason the fascists beat the communists was that the old aristocracy lined up behind the fascists, on the theory that anything was better than getting expropriated and lined up against a wall by bolsheviks.
Is there an example of a near-fascist state with significant ethnic diversity that's succeeded ?
Depends on what you mean by "succeeded", but Getulio Vargas in Brazil comes to mind as a potential example here. And Salazar in Portugal wasn't ultimately successful - his regime didn't outlive him - but lusotropicalism was the opposite of ethnically-exclusive; Salazar envisaged Angola, Mozambique, Goa, Timor, etc. as integral parts of Portugal itself.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Except that Cal Code of Civil Procedure 116.530 clearly states that attorneys can only appear in small claims court unless (1) they are party to the claim themselves in a personal capacity, (2) they're a member of a partnership whose members are all attorneys, or (3) they are an officer or director of a professional corporation whose officers/directors are all attorneys.
And section 116.540 specifies the form in which a corporation or other business association shall appear, which is "only through a regular employee, or a duly appointed or elected officer or director, who is employed, appointed, or elected for purposes other than solely representing the corporation in small claims court."
Small claims court is different.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
things like small claims court where a company sending a lawyer to show up and handle things would be more expensive than just giving the person suing you some money to drop the case.
I don't know about where you are, but in CA the whole point of small claims court is that a lawyer can't represent someone; it's fully in pro per by requirement.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I mean, yes, compared to the utterly defanged western europeans the Ukranians are fearsome. But I thought that the main lesson of this war has been Russia's incompetence and that their military production/procurement seems to be corrupt as hell and mostly faking their "advanced" capabilities.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
...No? That's literally the opposite of what I said. "Use value" assumes some objective, rational value of "use"; exchange value includes all the irrational feelings and opinions people can have about goods and services like risk aversion, FOMO, status, or just idiosyncratic preference. People also make secondary bets on what other people will find useful/interesting/worth buying, introducing further fuzziness into the system.
That's not commodity fetishism; it's the opposite. Recognizing that when people are buying things, they're not just buying things - they're communicating with other people as well.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
The US Army is so far behind we're bragging about just being able to drop grenades from drones
Why assume the public-facing releases are actually the state of the force?
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
in 2014 we got strong allies in the region
Er, I think "strong" is a bit optimistic - Ukraine was and remains a comparatively backward, deindustrializing, poor, and corrupt country with horrible demographics.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
The military gear spigot via these NATO purchases.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
That just shows that the marxian concept of "use value" isn't fully capturing what people find...useful...about the things they buy, because money is entirely fungible into other "useful" items, and insofar as people are willing to spend it on one thing, they're revealing their utility function about both that thing and the other things they could have bought but aren't.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
All that remains is him being economically right wing.
Errrr...which Trump? Tariff Trump? Giant deficit-exploding OBBB Trump? Like, I could be convinced these things are "right wing" - OBBB does roll back some Medicaid expansion, and insofar as the extra spend is to lock-in the 2017 tax cuts and pay for a lot more ICE, I could see it. But the definition of what constitutes "right wing economics" is pretty flexible right now.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
No, it's a Jewish billionaire being blackmailed by a Jewish fixer for the fixer's own personal benefit. There's no evidence whatsoever that you've supplied or that I've been able to find that the motive for the blackmail was to "support jewish causes" or ideological in any way shape or form. I don't know how you're overcoming the Occam's Razor presumption that this was bog-standard personal corruption and greed, rather than anything ideological.
Well-connected Jews have attempted to blackmail Jewish billionaires before. Rabbi Balkany tried to blackmail Steve Cohen into funding yeshivas.
Er, the only blackmail case I see from this link and a cursory google involving both Balkany and Steve Cohen is this, which doesn't involve blackmailing Cohen into supporting Israel more generally, or even specific yeshivot in Israel. Balkany apparently tried to shake down Cohen for donations to Balkany's own girl's school, which Balkany previously admitted to have been misappropriating money from. Doesn't seem to be at all useful as a counterexample to /u/2rafa's assessment.
what is "adversary-proof production"? What does it actually look like? I tried my typical strategy of hopping over to google scholar to see if I could find some academic writing on the topic, but perhaps they just use different key terminology, and I'm missing it. Can TheMotte help? Any academic work? Or even your home-grown (autarkic?) definition?
My naive assumption would be that a product is weakly "adversary-proof" for nation N when the production of the item and its inputs, as well as relevant transportation/shipment routes are located in territories directly controlled/defended by N's military, or the militaries of countries allied to N, and strongly "adversary-proofed" if all of the above conditions obtain plus production of the product and its inputs are located in places either beyond the direct reach of the conventional military and paramilitary capabilities of nations currently or plausibly adversarial to N, or which are meaningfully hardened against attack generally.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I don't think it was done to the Nazis qua being a Nazi, it was done because they materially lied about it during naturalization.
These are not materially different things. GK Chesterton actually remarked on this:
When I went to the American consulate to regularise my passports . . . [t]he officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality, it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called "Confessions" which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, "if you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?" . . .
One of the questions on the paper was, "Are you an anarchist?" To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, "What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?" along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an αρχη. Then there was the quesiton, "Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?" Agaisnt this I should write, "I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour, not the beginning." The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, "Are you a polygamist?" The answer to this is "No such luck" or "Not such a fool," according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W.T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question "Shall I slay my brother Boer?" - the answer that ran, "Never interfere in family matters." But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with beautiful gravity, "I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you." Or, "I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity." Or again, "Yes I am a polygamist all right and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries." There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
...
Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies. About that there will be something to be said later; but superficially it is true that this degree of officialism is comparatively unique. In a journey which I took only the year before I had occasion to have my papers passed by governments which many worthy people in the West would vaguely identify with corsairs and assassins; I have stood on the other side of Jordan, in the land ruled by a rude Arab chief, where the police looked so like brigands that one wondered what the brigands looked like. But they did not ask whether I had come to subvert the power of the Shereef; and they did not exhibit the faintest curiosity about my personal views on the ethical basis of civil authority. These ministers of ancient Moslem despotism did not care about whether I was an anarchist; and naturally would not have minded if I had been a polygamist. The Arab chief was probably a polygamist himself. These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared to the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the Spanish Inquisition.
...
It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth; and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the manner of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek Philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among other of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow touching theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition may have been admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now, in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the expierment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was trace on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
"What I saw in America" 1912, pgs. 3-9
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Welp, that's outed me as an online far-right autist, I suppose. (tongue very much in cheek)
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
A majority of historical wars were genocidal in intent; wanting to exterminate your enemies is in fact an extremely common motivation for warfare
Citation very much needed. Wanting to kill the enemy country's elites and replace them is common, wanting to loot the enemy country's stuff is common, wanting to reduce the enemy people to servitude or slavery is common, even wanting to displace and take territory from the enemy group is common. But even in "barbaric" ancient wars outright eliminating the enemy people root and branch is usually too much work for an unclear reward.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
see how anthropologists feel about Guns, Germs, and Steel
My understanding was that GGS was deprecated because it got objective facts wrong about the subjects it purports to address, not because it was ambitious in scope.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
What, does the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade not count? The “Blue Tribe” had pinned a huge policy platform of abortion on it, and it was totally undone
So in this giant Red win meant...that Blues no longer got to unilaterally dominate national policy. This is not comparable to Obergefell (or Roe in the original instance). Blue wins mean they get to override Red preferences everywhere. Red wins mean they get plausible cover to try and eake out a separate existence in some places. These are not the same.
It sounds like what you actually want is not the freedom to do as you wish, but the power to coerce others, and particularly to deny the other what they want.
Yes, this is what Blue tribe gets when they "win."
But wanting specifically to exert your power over another is something different. Its envy, or at least, is rooted in the same. Envy is seeing what someone else has, hating them for it, and wanting to destroy it. It’s bringing someone low because you can’t stand seeing them up.
What a coincidentally perfect distillation of major leftist legal doctrine.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
I'd urge to at least try "assimilate or GTFO" (don't know if there are any success stories as stark as El Salvador, though)
The best example in America are Germans. Germans went from being a fairly-unassimilated minority, with high non-english persistence and significant ethnic lobbying...to completely dissolved in the American "white" mainstream over the course of two generations. Of course, we all-but criminalized the teaching of German in schools and fought two wars against their coethnics with pretty stringent propaganda against the inherent evils of "Germanness," but it worked.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
Socialism at the federal level mostly means endlessly bloating the elder care apparatus
To be fair it also means doling out increasingly huge wodges of cash to professional activist organizations and favored political client groups.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
That really depends on what you mean by "left wing." But yeah, that's a structural problem for left wingers in a functionally one-party progressive political milieu.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
It's New York so of course the populist candidate is going to be a socialist, but is this really any different than the rise of right wing populists in Europe in effect?
Yes; the RWP rally around a policy - immigration restriction and recognition of islamicate/SE Asian cultural incompatibility with western norms - which cuts both against official ideology as well as the fundamental moral order of the post-WWII first world ideal.
NYC electing Mamdani is literally a 50-Stalins criticism of the existing order. "We haven't socialismed hard enough/real socialism has not been tried!"
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
The problem with socialisms are two - people are selfish and tragedy of the commons. For the first the only socialist solution that works so far is to beat them into submission.
Hardly; this just optimizes for the selfish people getting control of the clubs. Marxism has never truly grokked that people's ideological statements and interpersonal solidarity can be faked or hacked.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
A TrumpSon run would almost certainly capture significant quantities of credibility on the third leg
Unlikely; I've seen no evidence that any of Trump's kids possess his humor or stage presence - major reasons he did so well.
And yet, Goebbels.
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