Tretiak
6d ago
I’ve definitely noticed The Motte does skew pretty heavily on certain ideological lines.
Don’t express the virtues of collectivism. Don’t criticize the preference for libertarianism or small government. Don’t say anything critical of Zelensky. Don’t doubt the inherent virtue of unnamed people.
The most upvoted comments to my name are the ones least deserving of the recognition IMO. The ones that attempt to break any interesting ground by challenging common assumptions got hit on and buried the hardest. Certain topics I avoid discussing here and I’ve noticed a couple regulars here go silent for long periods of time, until a poster finally posts something related to the topic they want to discuss that isn’t a tired and constantly moving reel of current events laid out by Channel 5.
Tretiak
6d ago
If you’re deeply embedded in that cultural narrative, yeah sure it might feel like we are declining culturally. Lots of cultural institutions output have been horrific for the last 10-15 years.
Is that something people really dispute these days? 2025 surely doesn’t seem like the high tide of high cultural achievement to me. I’d encourage people to give me their best vanity pitch for the western world today and among those who’ve answered me thus far, the results haven’t been very encouraging.
Tretiak
6d ago
What the fuck?
I’ll always remember the hilarious Encyclopedia Dramatica write-up on him and their dredging up of now deleted videos they recovered, of him making legal threats against them and other parties for criticizing his content.
Tretiak
9d ago
I'm actually curious now to wonder what the societal winds were like when JFK was assassinated. Does anyone know what the political reaction was like on the other side and the media's response to it?
Tretiak
9d ago
Nybbler is correct that it's not a microaggression. A microaggression is similar to a backhanded compliment - "You're pretty hardworking for a black guy."
I always thought that was flicking someone's nipple. You learn something new everyday.
Cancel culture is nothing but the current iteration of wanting bad things to happen to people you dislike and the people you hate to have no power to do the same to you. One side may have more influence at any given moment, but even the minority will try and fail at it.
I remember Thomas Hobbes made the interesting analogy of how the Leviathan pacifies the worst impulses and instincts in men and how that deceives them into thinking this veil of civility has made man less barbaric than he otherwise is. In reality, it hasn't. The legal code has just become the new battlefield and substitute for one man to conduct warfare against another. Inter-tribal political warfare has never stopped and will likely never not remain an intrinsic feature of human beings.
Even in ideologically purist societies like Communist China, there are massive internal divisions and all manner of factional infighting between different power brokers and their respective spheres of influence. The Jiang Zemin faction and Xi Jinping faction hated one another. The Hu Jintao faction was independent of both. And all these parties try and use the organs of the CCP to gain leverage and assume power over their rivals. To this end cancel culture is nothing new and I fully agree with you. It may be an anathema to how we conduct our politics in the west but even so, it isn't new.
Tretiak
9d ago
Probably not but at least we validated the stereotype that men are always thinking about Rome.
I'm pretty big into ancient history and consequently Roman history. Good to know there's others here like that.
Nobody said he was incompetent. Like Caesar he was obviously a great man. I admitted from the start that he was wronged and that he could clearly see some of the problems in the constitution as it stood.
Well. Seems we agree then. That's much closer to the conclusion I wanted to emphasize. Not that his reforms weren't quickly reversed after he withdrew into retirement. They obviously were.
A Republican system depends on others buying into it and continually making the choice to restrict their own use of power. This cannot necessarily be achieved by Sulla just hanging around. If anything that increases the chance for the system to collapse into monarchy.
There is a question in here as to whether the Republic at large was just at the end of it's natural lifespan as it was transforming into something that was already beginning to look and feel different. I'm not saying the solution would've been for Sulla to linger around on the sidelines only that it was ultimately concluded more prematurely than it should've been. As far as collapsing into monarchy goes, you could argue Octavian's proscriptions were worse than Sulla's (a controversial statement, but one I've seen people make) but people are more willing to overlook it because it concluded with the Pax Romana, whereas Sulla's ended having enriched his friends and further solidified their positions among a corrupt ruling class.
It went about as well as the realization that the emperor could be made outside of Rome.
Septimius Severus did that. There have been more than a few provincial emperors, albeit that they came at a bad time; being at the tail end of a dying Empire.
But it is what it is. We should also consider that his motives, like Caesar's, were not pure. Both of them did what they did to defend their own dignity and interests. I'm more sympathetic to Caesar, since the risks were so much greater for him. But in both cases it wasn't just concern for the Republic.
I'm also more sympathetic to Caesar by a long shot. With him however, I think his motives ultimately were questionable as to whether he wanted to become king or not. It's not as cut and dry as people think it is.
Tretiak
10d ago
I actually thought it was that "Goats, Guns and Gold," dude that Peter Lavelle sometimes invites on Crosstalk RT.
Tretiak
10d ago
Obama was inaugurated in 2009. And Baltimore and Ferguson weighed heavily on the minds of people at the time.
Tretiak
10d ago
Twitter wouldn’t have moved the needle on Kamala’s shot at office, at least not after the first assassination attempt on Trump. If there was any doubt before then, there certainly was no doubt after it. It was all but guaranteed to him at that point.
Tretiak
10d ago
… we have half the country that sees riots and murders against people they don't like as a good thing, and they don't like the other half of the country.
Has this ever ‘not’ been a thing though? You can literally find this anywhere.
… the opponents of western liberal democracy have resorted to simply executing people…
In 2023 the US was #3 when it came to the amount of confirmed executions. And while I wouldn’t want to be beaten out by choosing to live in an Islamic theocracy, western democracies have no problems when it comes to executing people. In fact it would probably solve some problems by choosing to execute a few people.
I think you and I will just fundamentally disagree on this. Caesar also ultimately failed at his task of reform and picked the tools of a tyrant to do it. Things didn’t exactly pan out for him either. Sulla wasn’t the guy the Republic needed at the time, but he was the one they got nonetheless. And as I mentioned earlier, I’m not a guy that readily defends Sulla and I don’t like him, but I don’t think this is an appropriate criticism of him.
To my point he was brilliant, to your point he was ruthless. Two things can be true at the same time. His main failure as a reformer came from him not being able to stay in power long enough to cement them. Something that I don't point to as proof of his incompetence or idiocy. At any rate he was a guy who thought the ends justified the means. Plenty of people not his equal thought the same way and yet he stood head and shoulders over many of them. I regard that as quite impressive. The man died peacefully in his own bed.
His first march on Rome was in response to Marius's use of the Tribunate of the Plebs to essentially usurp the authority of the Senate. It's difficult for me to decide whether this move was actually a good or bad one. On one hand the citizens and plebeians of Rome lose a say in the governance of the Empire and therein the ability to protect their self interests. Any few senators who did genuinely care for the welfare of the people would have been hard pressed to help them in an apathetic Senate. On another hand the plebeians were easily manipulated by wild demagogues like Gracchus, Saturnius and Sulpicius who had only self-interest on the agenda.
His proscribing of his political enemies was more testimony to his character, utterly ruthless and unforgiving. (Sulla's epitaph was literally "No better friend, no worse enemy.") In that respect he was greatly feared by both Senate and people and was allowed to retire when he had enacted his laws with very little political opposition.
Tretiak
11d ago
Sulla wasn't successful at anything other than enriching his cronies and buying enough breathing room to not have to face revenge for his actions.
By what standard of the ancient world are we judging him according to this? That’s practically how ‘all’ these societies were ran back then. By a modern more objective metric, sure, Sulla was as you describe him. If we’re grading him on a curve and placing him in the context and circumstances he lived with, he was pretty ‘good’ for the most part in governing a system where that kind of nepotism and cronyism went by the rule of law 2,000 years ago.
Part of the problem is looking back on this with the benefit of hindsight. I don’t like Sulla as a leader in virtually any capacity, but he was quite effective when it came to running the show and conducting the orchestra of the power brokers he was a part of.
Tretiak
11d ago
I take issue with the unearned dismissal of feudalism as a system of government that is all too widespread since the modern period.
If you want to live in an anarcho-capitalist society that’s run by corporate feudal lords, have at it. I’m not against the idea of it working, but see it as highly unlike at worst and undesirable by most at best. Some people would do well. No doubt. Just as some people did well in Nazi Germany or Los Zetas does in Tamaulipas. Die hard libertarians may want to live in this society but normal human beings do not.
The problem is the fate of the country often depends on who does win. In large parts of American society there’s been a huge and growing quiet withdrawal from certain demographics that even the Brookings Institutions has published books about, simply because the people steering the helm of the cultural ship excludes and doesn’t partake of the vision of society that would include these people. You won’t get people to participate if they feel there’s nothing in it for them. That’s why it’s so imperative that your side win out. Because if the other side wins, you don’t just lose, you lose everything, including a reason to keep trying.
Sulla’s proscriptions were actually successful, and he didn’t have to be overly concerned with ordinary people because ideology isn’t always relevant to most of what people had to do to get along with their daily lives thousands of years ago. And information also had a much shorter range and traveled much slower.
A society can often only please one party at the expense of another losing out. It’s why every society that exists on Earth, liberal or not, consists of winners and losers. Effective ones can figure out a way for people to make do with their unhappiness or until a political pressure valve allows them relief of their anger and frustration, which is difficult to manage. But it’s better than a liberal society that tries to please all parties involved because a society that tries to please everyone will end up pleasing no one in the long term.
Tretiak
12d ago
Israel never "withdrew" from Gaza in 2005. Israel redeployed from the heart of Gaza to the periphery. And Israeli experts themselves have even admitted this. The "withdraw" with an expressed attempt kill any chance of Palestinian Statehood. Back in 2004 while the plan was still being discussed in the Knesset Dov Weisglass waa senior adviser to Ariel Sharon and straight up said to his face “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” By “freezing” the political process his claim was that you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem”.
And by their own admission the “withdrawal” from Gaza didn't entail ceasing to make life hell for the Palestinians and would keep the Gazans on a "diet." If you call being blocked from export, blocked from import, fishermen not being able to go out to fish, the naval vessels driving them back to shore, and ignore the statements of the Israelis themselves, etc., then yeah; they withdraw. Just over a third of Gaza’s arable land is barred from entry to Palestinians. It’s called a “barrier.” They want to keep them on that, meanwhile separated from the West Bank, and continue the ongoing project of taking over.
How many military incursions did Israel make into Gaza since pulling out in 2014 and October 7th, 2023? Your brilliant suggestion was Israeli policy for the better part of a decade. Hamas responded to this cessation of hostilities by committing the worst pogrom since the Holocaust. At this point "complete and total destruction of Hamas, root and branch" strikes me as an entirely reasonable goal for Israel to pursue.
Do you actually mean to tell me the ongoing presence of a military occupation doesn't amount to a military incursion?
Tretiak
12d ago
In libertarian world, society is as laissez faire as owner of the society (technically, land where the society is) wants it to be. Do not like it? Pull yourself by your bootstraps and build your own society.
And in the real world, don't blame people for not following in lockstep with the libertarian fantasy when they decide to pull themselves up by their bootstraps by pulling out a gun and robbing you of your personal property. Otherwise, have fun homesteading on the eastern plateau of Antarctica. This is why the "libertarian world" will never become what we can the "real world," at any point.
Tretiak
12d ago
Dubai isn't even remotely close to something like that. Perhaps the closest thing I can think of to an anarcho-capitalist (i.e. "feudal") society is something like minimal, positive non-interventionism in Hong Kong. Have some people benefitted? Sure. If you're one of the 220,000 people that still live in cages, probably not. I'm not going to bid on that kind of future.
You just take your own biases for granted. You speak of "governance" as if it's a done deal already that an elected few have the last word on all aspects of how society is to be run. It's not.
I would've thought judging by results was good enough. Your reply to my original claim was that you liked the system you lived under, and yet it wasn't what I described at all. So what's the issue then? That I wasn't making an argument you wanted to respond to?
One that's reasoned from first principles by administrators instead of being the mere codification of ancient custom. I don't see why I should grant more legitimacy to the former than the latter, except that I am forced to do so at gunpoint.
You obviously haven't perused much of my post history. I'm not faulting you for that, but this is just inaccurate because I am a staunch and ardent traditionalist and readily accept the latter. Again, you're not responding to my actual argument.
All civilization is based on violence, why should I like your monopoly better than my competition when it actually makes bigger and more deadly wars?
Civilizations and the maintenance of social order are ruled by the implied 'threat' of violence. Wholly unrestricted use of force versus regulated force is the contrast between living in a society and living in a civilization. All civilizations are societies but not all societies are civilizations. You can't have the latter without the former.
I'd indeed much rather it be in many hands than just the hands of the State. Because i have seen the XXth century and I don't much enjoy being expropriated and exterminated because some guy had an idea.
And I don't want to live in an anything goes society where my freedom and liberty extends only to what I can physically fight for an defend from someone else. You can live in a world where everything is up for grabs on a daily basis, I'll settle for a world where my neighbors and I are fine with not getting 100% of everything we want from each other but can live with each other in peace.
I’m not aware of any venn diagram that logically entails centralism at the mention of the idea of a regulated society. A lack of enforceable norms or rules simply means anyone with the means can go in and impose his own on everybody else.
“Centralism” isn’t a synonym for “rule of law.” Centralism is a type of rule of law. And to be honest to quote Deng Xiaoping, “I don’t care whether it’s a white cat or a black cat so long as it catches mice.” The test of its success of governance is its overall pragmatism, not whether “centralism” or “federalism” or “localism” is right.
You like living in a society where the only limiting factor on that is how many guns someone has on the rack of the back of their pickup truck?
Hamas didn’t fire off thousands of rockets against their peaceful neighbors. They fired off thousands of rockets at people they’re being occupied by.
The entire debate being had is the one Israel gets to play by imposing the framework of discussion to make Hamas take blame for things they aren’t primarily at fault for.
And your gloss of this is that Israel bears more responsibility for escalation of hostilities than Hamas?
Yes because Israel is the military occupier. You can’t be fair to an occupier. How can you?
The obvious next question is - if the fashion Israel responded to October 7th was excessive or inappropriate or whatever, what, in your estimation, ought they to have done instead?
As far as a comprehensive program at this point, I really don’t know. But I can tell you where Israel should start. Halt any further military incursion tomorrow and rethink its plans for the region. There would be a good place to start. Hamas should end its violent campaign as well and the easiest way for both sides to do that is to stop participating in it.
What I meant more is in their ability to step outside of the pro-US centric narrative that’s been constructed surrounding the reality of NATO, the Ukraine and Russia.
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