TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Russia itself was mocked as being a third world country with a gas station. That hasn't exactly aged well.
It was mocked as a gas station with nukes. Nobody ever said Russia couldn't be dangerous if it wanted to.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Russia is thinking in centuries.
That backfired horribly then, since the invasion turned the UA-RU relationship from something that resembled the USA and Canada, to something that resembles RU vs Poland. The Russians might get the land in the end, but they've lost the Ukrainians themselves who were mostly loyal during the USSR. The best Russia can really hope for now is that Ukrainians take a "slavery is better than death" attitude, but that hardly makes for a strong empire.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The future of Ukraine is Somali and Bangladeshi migrants working on farms owned by American financial institutions and managed by HR women educated in the US
Nonsense. Wokeness and high immigration is not enforced top-down by the US, it's a decision that each nation makes independently. Japan has been under more intense US occupation than any other country, yet it's far less woke than most of Europe.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Most of the fertility rate collapse happened while the US was highly religious.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
It seems like you've never been around an intelligent religious person before.
This might sound a bit snide, but "intelligence" and "religiosity" tend to be anti correlated. This applies to both the baseline question of "are you religious, yes or no", as well as for level of zealotry. I'm sure I've met quite a few intelligent religious people, but religion hasn't been a big part of their lives and they're mostly watered-down deists.
The crucial part of the "placebo" is that it actually works.
Every lie incurs a debt to the truth.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I became religious slowly over the course of years and it all started by getting deep into analytic philosophy and rationalism in an attempt to merely "be better at thinking."
I find this a bit hard to take seriously. It's like if somebody told me they spent a lot of time analyzing economic models, and in the end they're now certain that Soviet Communism is the only correct choice. I don't know you're specific path, but option 1 is that you believe the superstitious parts of Christianity, in which case your attempts to be better at thinking is severely misaligned. Option 2 is that you believe in some watered-down deistic form of "cultural Christianity", and are arbitrarily ignoring the vast gulf between your beliefs and what most actual Christians believe.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Ah yes, the "by 2300 we'll all be Amish" idea. Somehow I doubt this will come to pass.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
That's all irrelevant because groups that lucked into right beliefs thrive, those that had bad luck die out.
If you accept this idea, what does that tell you about religion's irreversible decline then?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Fallujah 1 was a conventional urban battle, not an anti-partisan operation, so it's not really getting at what I posted above. And yes, the US did effectively pacify Iraq in the short-term without slaughtering huge masses of the population through reprisals. It certainly didn't get long-term pacification though as ISIS spread almost as soon as US troops left, but that's a separate issue. An issue that Israel is also likely to face unless it's willing to actually genocide the Palestinians
The only way to get long-term pacification is by a hearts-and-minds victory. One possibility is getting the locals to all think your government type is great which is what the US tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's almost certainly always doomed to failure. The other possibility is delegitimizing violence by snuffing out all hopes of victory, like what happened with Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Israel also won't be able to do this since Palestinians are gaining a long-term diplomatic edge by the current Israeli overreaction.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Israel is fighting a partisan war, which cannot be won without high civilian causalities, in the first place because the militants live among the community but, more importantly, because reprisals against the civilian population are a requirement for winning a partisan war (Israel knows this, the US could never accept that).
Haven't read the rest of this post yet, but this part in particular is dead wrong. Reprisals might be effective in some circumstances, but are by no means required. A good example is the US pacification of Iraq. The following post is made from someone with first-hand experience in the matter:
I'm a OIF veteran myself, who spent two years in Iraq, one during the bloody Surge in 07-08, the other including being in the "last" US combat brigade to leave Iraq in 2010 (after that, they were only advise-assist brigades not meant to perform any combat duties). Besides my own military service (as an infantry NCO), I spent years afterwards reading every book, article, report, etc that I could find to better understand what actually happened during "my war."
You are dead wrong in your assessment.
When we handed Iraq over to the Iraqi govt, as part of the SOFA agreement, it was pacified and the typical Iraqi city was less violent than the typical American city. That was due to successful execution of COIN doctrine.
We broke the back of the Sunni Arab insurgency with the Al Sawah/Awakening Movement, which capitalized on growing hatred between the rank and file moderate insurgents and especially their tribal leadership and the hardcore Salafi insurgents, most notably Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq, who were already pissing off the locals with their extremist tactics.
Starting in 2006 in Anbar Province, the US partnered with Iraqi tribes against AQI, standing up militias to take control of the local areas, driving AQI out as the local former insurgents turned militia knew exactly who they were, where they lived, where their caches were located, where their safe houses were, who supported them, etc. The Awakening spread to the rest of the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq through 2007, by the second half of that year the daily number of Significant Actions (SIGACT), violent attacks against Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces, or civilians, had plummeted.
Halfway through my first deployment, all spent in the "Sunni Triangle," it went from me thinking it would be pure chance to spend 15 months without getting at least seriously wounded, to being shocked at how boring and quiet it had become. My second deployment, also in the Sunni Triangle, was absolutely boring. Zero action, no IEDs, no ambushes, no firefights, there was almost no fighting happening period.
The Shi'a insurgency, dominated by the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade (and other Iran proxy groups) was also broken in 2007-8. Partly by the US, especially punishing the Mahdi Army in their uprisings. But mainly it was Maliki and the Iraqi Army who did it, crushing the Basra uprising in 2008, which was only possible because the US trained them, assisted with the clearing operation, etc. That forced al-Sadr to come to terms and agree to both a cease fire and to disband.
The US didn't squash the Badr Bde, they were tied to the Iraqi govt, with so many of them moonlighting in Iraqi Security Forces, but when they knew the SOFA was going to kick after Bush signed that agreement, they recognized there was no point attacking US forces anymore so they stopped, also around 2008. With Baghdad largely ethnically cleansed of Sunnis by that point, they also laid off the death squads, especially after the US/British SOF dismantled the AQI terror cells that were deliberately targeting Shi'a civilians with mass casualty events to purposely start a secular civil war, JSOC's army of face-shooting Tier 1 assaulters and brainiac secret squirrels ended that threat through a campaign of intelligence directed raids that is still absolutely awesome to contemplate.
Iraq went to shit after we pulled out because the US wasn't there anymore. Maliki was left to do as they pleased, and he really wanted to terrorize the Sunni Arabs into compliance, which was a huge mistake. When GWB was POTUS, he spoke almost daily to Maliki on the phone offering guidance, coordinating, etc, and that kept him in check. After Obama became POTUS, he spoke to him once, and then washed his hands of Iraq after the pullout. When the US left and quit involvement in Iraq in 2011, done and no longer "answering the phone" that created an enormous power vacuum which Iran filled, who were also pressuring Maliki to crack down on the Sunni Arabs.
THAT is what caused the DAESH Uprising. The Sunni Arabs were even trying to address political issues non-violently, but Maliki cracked down on them with state-directed violence and mass arrests in 2012-2013, and that was what broke the camel's back and restarted the sectarian civil war. At that point, the largest, bloodiest, most well-funded insurgent group was Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq, who had recently been fighting in Syria for the past two years developing even more effectively violent means of terrorism and warfare, had renamed themselves Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria), and the rest is history.
But that was not a failure of US COIN doctrine, which was to seek local solutions to problems, to use whatever means we had (including bribery) to win locals over to our side, to emphasize non-violent means of problem-solving over violent (such as setting up new businesses to grow their economy, a role every US military combat arms unit commander was performing), to live among the people, to share their dangers, to learn to know them, etc.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Sometimes a storm comes and chips at our eaves, but we repair it and we're fine. It's not until your entire house tumbles down that you can replace the foundation for a better one. Religion generally takes hold in moments of immense weakness
This is a pretty silly summarization. People become religious under stress since they're grasping at straws for any modicum of control they can find, and the only one they've got is hoping placebos work. Keeping on those placebos afterwards is somewhere between neutral if they otherwise keep their behavior the same, to severely negative if they e.g. think prayer is more powerful than medicine
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Plenty of researchers use corruption perceptions in their research on country outcomes. Do you have a better metric you'd like to use?
If we can't agree on some underlying data then there's no point in continuing this conversation.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I do think people overstate the extent to which communism doesn't work
Definitely not. Communism is just totally bankrupt as an economic ideology. The only reason why the USSR lasted as long as it did was because they let limited capitalistic ideas seep through pretty quickly. If you want to see the closest thing to Communism as written, read up about War Communism. Everyone hated it.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Yeah, that's not a bad definition. Do you have a link or source you can give me that defines it that way?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I'll grant that, but either way communism seems to be unique in the amount of scars it leaves on a country, and should be treated uniquely, rather than to make a general point about authoritarianism.
Communism is a uniquely bad economic system, but it also has the authoritarianism or totalitarianism which is part of what makes it terrible. The economic systems aren't close, but the political control of the leaders are, and thus a comparison can be made.
That's starting to sound like any democracy that's not performing well is not a true democracy.
Well yes, a democracy that gets couped into a dictatorship is... no longer a true democracy. Corruption isn't solved overnight, so if a country oscillates between democracy and dictatorship every decade then it's probably going to be more corrupt than a nation that's been democratic for multiple decades or centuries.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This looks a lot like degree of hostility of the US is the best predictor of your measure of totalitarianism.
This is backwards. The US has democracy as a big part of its ideology, and thus is naturally allies with most democracies and is inherently hostile towards most autocracies. However, it's not black and white; Saudi Arabia has long been authoritarian, and is creeping towards totalitarianism under MBS, yet they're still an important regional ally of the US.
Turkey < Ukraine <= Russia << China
Russia has also gotten worse since the war started. There's no real opposition. The closest thing to it died in a Siberian labor camp not too long ago. You're not even allowed to openly criticize Putin any more, which people like Girkin have found out. Ukraine has done a bunch of bad things too like postponing its election, but I'm pretty sure people are still allowed to criticize Zelensky without getting Girkin'ed.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Totalitarianism is a more extreme form of authoritarianism. E.g. Imperial Germany during WW1 was authoritarian, while Nazi Germany in WW2 was totalitarian.
China was totalitarian under Mao, authoritarian with the Deng Xiaoping reforms, and is tilting towards totalitarianism again with Xi, although that might have paused (unclear at the moment). I wouldn't really call Turkey totalitarian yet. Ukraine was authoritarian, but have had freeish elections since the Maidan, although they have a ton of other problems and are by no means a consolidated democracy yet.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Left wing authoritarianism is still authoritarianism. Further, modern China isn't particularly communist, and hasn't been since at least the 80s. It's more like Fascism With Chinese Characteristics. Openly fascist countries like Nazi Germany also pretended to be nominally democratic by carrying around the corpse of the Reichstag, but the illusion fooled nobody.
The corrupt democracies are mostly the ones that have shaky democratic fundamentals, i.e. ones that are either hybrid regimes, or the ones that wobble in and out of coups.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The east Asian democracies are quite far from the Western democracies, and many have similar cultures to eastern autocracies, yet the corruption of the autocracies is far, far worse. Again, look at South Korea vs North Korea, or Taiwan vs China.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I don't really see any evidence that authoritarianism is the sole variable when it comes to corruption.
It's easily one of the biggest factors, if not the single biggest factor period. Look at the corruptions perception index, and notice how many of the least corrupt countries are democratic, while many of the most corrupt are authoritarian or totalitarian. Look at the differences between Taiwan and China, or between the two Koreas. Same cultures, but different governing styles make a huge amount of difference. Look at Post-Soviet states that escaped Russia's orbit vs those that didn't, like Poland vs Belarus. The entire Ukraine conflict that's been going on since 2014 is in large part because Ukrainians want to be more like Poland than Belarus. DEI, while being a terrible ideology, is worlds apart from actual dictatorships like Russia or Venezuela or North Korea.
Dictators are never entirely secure, and totalitarian dictators can freely devote more of the state's resources towards maintaining their own positions than authoritarian ones can. They accomplish this largely through corruption.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
This is just a right-wing version of whig history, and relies just as much on cherrypicking historical datapoints as liberal whig history does.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Why are you asking that as a top-level post instead of responding to @Hoffmeister25 directly?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I agree that top-level posts shouldn't be able to be deleted as that shuts down an already existing conversation. Maybe deleting it could remove it from that person's posting history, but it definitely shouldn't remove it from view for everyone.
That said, the rest of his post here doesn't really justify a ban. I agree it might be borderline, but swap the valence from left to right and his post would look pretty close to any other fare here, including many posts that end up being QCs.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Russia is transitioning from authoritarianism to totalitarianism, which typically increases corruption, not decreases it. At the same time, Russia is devoting more resources to fighting the West, so it's entirely plausible that it's becoming both more dangerous and more corrupt simultaneously.
Boris Johnson is the UK, not the US. The US has been lightly pushing for peace behind closed doors for a while now.
Also, encouraging war from one head of government is very different from "not letting Ukraine negotiate a peace". Total motte and bailey here.
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