As a resident Slovak here I can say that as usual there is conflation of true and false statements in there. As a quick rundown, the current election followed years of political instability of Slovak government that I think was led by genuinely mentally ill person in form of former prime minister. The period was marked by chaos and incompetence, paradoxically the last year we basically had so called "bureaucratic government" that had limited powers but provided more stability all around. As a result the parties that participated in that government fell precipitously and 4 out of 7 parties now in parliament were extraparliamentary or even nonexistent during last election - we are talking about 81 out of 150 seats belonging to these parties.
Nevertheless the election revolved around the person of Robert Fico, who is seen as Orban-like person except he is more malleable in his views and he changed his rhetoric several times in order to gather more votes. On the other side of the isle there was a lot of drama, we have a progressive party literally called Progressive Slovakia (PS) who ended up second in the election. This is the darling of the media, they are pushing the usual CW stuff one would expect, they literally have part of the program called "Equity" where they push for things like free contraception in pharmacies including for teenagers, trans identity (including government IDs) based on self-determination without any medical paper and so forth. They also have a lot of activists including people from Greenpeace in their party and so forth.
Now a lot of the "disinformation" claims revolved around tone policing and language policing of these facts. It is the usual stuff one saw for years everywhere, where you pick the most uncharitable argument against PS policies and at the same time take the most Motte-type reading of their proposition and explain how opponents only spread disinformation as PS only wants human rights or whatever. Of course the same benefit of doubt is not afforded to the other side: one of the most discussed moments of the campaign was when the chairman of Christian Democratic Party was asked what is worse in his eyes: LGBT or corruption. And he answered that "both are scourge" later in the same interview explaining that he meant not LGBT people but "LGBT ideology". Of course all respected newspapers and media selected that one sentence and claimed that he is homophobe who spreads hate against gays (no peep on T part of LGBT of course, people in Slovakia are not generally that keen on trans stuff). On rare occasions where the other part of the question was cited (about LGBT ideology) it was explained that "LGBT ideology does not exist" and it has to be hate against Gays and Lesbians. So again, you can literally insert into mouth of what somebody else is saying by defining words he says in your way. And this misinformation is claimed as protecting against misinformation.
Now also to be frank, there was a lot of very nasty parts of the campaign. There were private messages of politicians openly talked about by former prime minister where he claimed he got it from "somebody he will not name". You had open war where mistresses of other politicians also shared his private messages and it probably caused him to lose (I think deservedly). There were outright usual hoaxes on social media how this party wants to lower pensions etc. But in general the hardcore "disinformation sphere" represented by pro-Putin social media celebrities as represented by the party "Republic" failed, they had sub 5% result which put them outside of parliament despite having more than 10% in many of pre-election polls. The party of former prime minister now also faces accusation of buying votes from poor Villages as they have 90%+ results in places that are basically racially segregated Roma people. That one I think carries a lot of water, there is a practice where you can take votes of other parties except for party you are supposed to throw in and sell them for cash, it happened in the past in some of the places. But again this fraud is tied not to Fico but to his most vocal opponent, so there is that.
Anyway, long story short I think this is now a regular thing to accuse opponent of doing something you yourself are doing - using misinformation to accuse somebody of doing misinformation and then fighting against this percieved threat. If the other side reacts in some stupid way (e.g. saying that LGBT is scourge) then this is perfect, you can now say that you are only reacting and defending when going full force.
georgioz
8mo ago
My view is that wokeness uses whatever means are available to gain power, it literally is based on analyzing power relations and taking advantage of them. Specific government regulation is just one way to do it, but there are many other examples how they could use different ideas and angles to gain power in institutions ranging from forum communities to organized religions as with now with potential schism in Catholich Curch over attitude toward gay sex of catholic priests of all things. There is no need for Civil Rights act in order to take over moderation of knitting community.
One can also see it in the social technology of intersectionality. They have multiple angles to use ranging from race, through sex, sexual orientation as well as other categories such as disabilities, gender, being fat and so forth including plain old economic Marxism. They use ides from radical feminism, critical race theory, queer theory or postcolonial studies and more utilizing very similar template of oppressed/oppressor dynamics. In this sense woke can spread everywhere from US using mostly guilt of racism but also in UK or France praying on guilt from colonialism but also in Eastern Europe using feminism but also India where they can point to caste system and other issues.
He needs to reach people who think wokeness is bad, but don't understand why every single institution has adopted it. The book explains why.
I did not read the book, so does he have some answers of not only for breath of institutions affected but also international reach of the ideas? Because Civil Rights will not cut it as it is too narrow of a scope of ideas as well as geography.
This is not only possible, but quite normal behavior in absence of information. For instance consider male offspring of a monarch inheriting the throne is considered the first choice from nobles who never talked to each other in a given culture where cognatic primogeniture is common. It is very natural that each of the nobles have their own sons inheriting their titles, so they expect every other person to adhere to the same principle for the king. Additionally this is a natural protection against pretenders, rebellions, civil wars and related chaos. Now of course we had those as well, inheritance was disputed and so forth - but it always requires additional coordination and persuasion, a real conspiracy and work.
And this is just one example, we have a lot of Schelling points of various social games that even people who never met each other are naturally attracted towards based on facts about our bodies and psychology.
georgioz
8mo ago
This seems logical to me. She can actually google you, maybe look you up on LinkedIn before giving her own info.
I think it is roughly correct. Historically only fraction of males reproduced sometimes getting as low a number as 1:17 compared to women. On the other hand even if women reproduced, they had at times 30% chance of dying in childbirth in their lives. So on average we really are in relatively similar numbers of men who were not able to reproduce and women that died after (hopefully) reproducing - if their child was not the first one and stillborn.
There is the saying that only women really are "being" and valued for what they are - the potential of being the mother. The men are "doings" and their value derives from what they bring to the table. It roughly corresponds to rites of passage: women have it simple, they were historically considered adult as soon as they experienced their first menstruation. Males often had to undergo crazy rituals involving pain and risk of death.
Now of course we do live in a different society for some time now, but I do think that the evolution really did not catch up yet. The general attitudes are still the same as they were thousands of years ago.
The older I get the more I dislike this first principles thinking based on rights and so forth. I think ultimately there is only one social law in the world, the law of the jungle. Just as any other animal, you get to keep your property if you can physically keep it. You conveniently evaded the issue of natives in USA, but that was precisely the case. Natives could not keep their land so they did not. As easy as that.
Current social and economic arrangement exists because it has legitimacy. Legitimacy is ability to keep powerful individuals from exerting violence to take what they want. You can get legitimacy by naked power, by growing the spoils so there is easier way to get ahead than using violence as well as by creating social structures regulating violent behavior or any number of other means.
This will be a tangent, but I recently watched YouTube discussion of some people from Niger where they reacted to US news reports about recent coup in that country which was described as anti-democratic and authoritarian etc. And they laughed, Niger ranks 189th out of 191 countries in the world in UN Development index, it is as poor as it can get. It does not matter if god himself was ruling that country and he was just unlucky, the result is abject poverty and failure. The regime simply has no legitimacy, it does not work and no number of "first principles" talks about democracy and freedom make any sense in Niger. If society is in ruin and ruled by illegitimate regime, is anti-social behavior really antisocial?
For people who defend the current conception of property in the industrialized world, and who think that we should accept the idea of starting at step 3 and not worrying about 1 and 2, what is the justification?
It works. First World now is still arguably the best place and time to live in history of mankind, even now in 2023. The current system has build up some legitimacy, it was able to grow its population along its wealth for centuries now. There may be some reasons to play on the edges and adjust things here and there, but I do not think we are close to anything that should require drastic measures like in Niger.
Please read my comment again, I did not say anything about any binary choice, I said about risk, which means that these things will happen to more and more women on the margin to borrow econospeak. Also the "since the dawn of time" is just simple naturalistic fallacy, I am not even sure what to do with it so I won't respond.
georgioz
8mo ago
The way I understand 2rafa's argument is that a woman that craves "normal" and traditional monogamous relationship is in a trap. In the modern environment she has to go out and risk getting burned by some sexual predator who will take advantage of her. A logical thing to do in such an environment may be to lash out utilizing available tools such as #MeeToo.
Some time ago there was an article here on The Mote by someone who pointed out to exactly this phenomenon using some Indian word. The phenomenon being demonstrated by an image of car cut in half used as a horse carriage complete with rubber wheels. It was too heavy and not suitable as a horse cart, but the new technology of car was successful enough to completely wipe out institutional knowledge of how to build a good horse carriage. So when a crisis came and fuel became too expensive so cars were not viable anymore, people used the tools available to them to put something together which was subpar to what was there before.
The example here is sexual behaviour where 2023, one such example is infamous sex consent app where people will be required to agree to a contract prior to having sex. If only there was an institutions where two people swore before witnesses that they are now in a relationship - including sexual one - voluntary and in full knowledge of consequences. So we will solve the situation surrounding sex and relationships with an app, because this is year 2023 and old things like marriage is no longer viable social technology anymore.
If you want to understand Identity Politics, then it is best to go to the source of Black feminist group named The Combahee River Collective and how they defined it in their 1977 manifesto
This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves.
This is the true birthplace of the concept of intersectionality, The Combahee River Collective was a group of black women many of them were lesbians. They connected their identity to oppression, and posited that until the least privileged are free (black, queer women), nobody is free. Of course the identity politics in this sense is abhorrent as it automatically assigns value judgement to immutable characteristics such as sex, race etc. The way to get around this is to introduce systemic thinking. You are a man and even if you do not directly and consciously engage in oppression, you nevertheless have access to male privilege and you implicitly and unwittingly perpetuate the system of power - The Patriarchy (or White Supremacy or Capitalism etc.) - that oppresses people. You will never be able to tap into the lived experience of oppressed people, you will always lack this way of knowing, but you can be an ally and center these marginalized identities whenever possible. To center here it means literally, they imagine identities being on the margin of the circle while privileged people are in the center. Marginalized people have better view of the situation having the outside view, you have to shrink the circle and introduce margins into the conversation. You will see these concept in DEI training explaining it all to you. As Di Angelo says:
This work [anti-racism in this case] requires courage and commitment to a lifelong process.
It is lifelong work until patriarchy/capitalism/white supremacy/whatever is dismantled completely. But before then you have to give power to the marginalized so that the society can reorient itself in right direction under their expert guidance to dismantle oppression. Once that goal is achieved, the marginalized will abolish themselves as they will no longer need the power and we all end up in utopia.
That is the one minute summary of generalized dialectical conspiracy theory, their weltanschaung and ideas behind that worldview. It really is quite simple if you look at it. For sure at least in the way to identify who is the victim and who is to blame for everything as with many other conspiracy theories. Similarly to those there is also a huge rabbit hole to lose yourself for a lifetime, but the general gist stays the same despite complicated sounding jargon and the rest of it.
This is generalized conspiracy theory prevalent on the left and that for various reasons endorsed and spread without closer examination. You have two groups: one is oppressor and the other one is oppressed. Oppressors have control over some special property and they use their power to deny oppressed people access to this property. They then create a system that perpetuates and entrenches this dynamic into the future keeping the oppressed people where they are.
So for feminists you obviously have men as oppressors and women as oppressed. Men use their male privilege to oppress women. They also perpetuate the whole system called patriarchy for the future. The same goes for workers/bourgeoisie/capitalism or "normal people"/queer people/cisheteronormativity and so on.
As with all conspiracies, there is grain of truth to it. Even the most stupid ones - like chemtrails - have some useful nugget somewhere down there, like for instance Operation LAC where US governments literally secretly sprayed dangerous chemicals over US soil in order to study if this is viable military technology. That is your Motte, and then Bailey is whatever you want it to be.
I think that the "civil rights" approach degenerated decades ago. When I was thinking about it, the right is now basically whatever value you want to push, it is an excerpt of your holy book you want to impose on other people. I had this discussion about the program of leftist party in my country and I was called a bigot for opposing some trans related points in the program. Of course, because these are rights and we do not discuss them, rights are outside of political purview, you see?. Of course we also have climate rights, we have right to free shelter and healthcare including proposals for right to oral care. In such a case you are basically supposed to live in blue tribe version of sharia law, the only thing that is to be part of the political process is meaningless issues - such as if tax should be X or X+1 percent. The rest is not subject of discussion, it is all spoils for winners of culture war. Everything is political indeed, and at the same time nothing is.
Similarly to OP, I realize that this post is quite antagonistic in a sense, but I do not see any other way. I consciously decided to vote on culture war issues exactly for OPs reasons. I think that voting based on policies is becoming stupid in this polarized society. Otherwise you will exactly end up in situation that OP describes, an anarchotyranny where one side views your values as illegitimate and that is capable and willing to do anything to suppress them. It is fundamental clash of aesthetics above substance. In my political discussions I have better results pointing out that incompatibility:
You think that I am transphobe for criticizing program of your favorite party? Look, I don't care. Your words ring hollow to me, I could not care less because I do not share your aesthetics. To me it is analogous as if you criticize me for being uncouth pigeater who sins against muslim aesthetics. It is a category error, I do not care about it whatsoever - in fact I laugh in your face while eating greasy pork fried in lard, downing it with huge gulps of forbidden strong beer. What are you going to do about it?
I really do not know how to get out of this pickle.
georgioz
9mo ago
This I think is another point of view that is problematic for Marxists but also for other people: namely that capital is literally a tool for capitalists to produce value. In the same way hammer and sickle is a tool for worker/farmer to produce goods, Tesla, Inc. is just a tool for Elon Musk to produce cars. Famer does not necessary have to make the sickle from iron ore and a tree, he has to rely on other workers and their capital producing it. In this sense the capitalist is just more complex type of worker.
The "analysis" does not really depend on that single "sentence" - although I also think calling it just as a sentence is uncharitable. It is not some random sentence from Sequences, The OP called is as a credo, it is oneliner that is tied to rationalism and Yudkowsky especially.
What I was getting at was the overall tone of some of the rationalist writing that I think "the credo" shows very well: it is edgy sounding guru oneliners that are sometimes literally used in normal conversation - the credo in particular I think was for instance said by Aella in her interview with Lex Fridman unironically.
I also admit that I am maybe too harsh, maybe I am taking it all too uncharitably. It is just internet infotainment, there is not that much going on and rationalists do have also oneliners like "it all adds up to normalcy". And then one reminds himself that normalcy includes saving ants, or AI apocalyptic doomerism and then I am not as sure what charitable take on rationalist utilitarianism should look like when taken as an actual moral philosophy that is adopted up by the unwashed masses.
Also as a closing point, I thought in this manner due to the fact that the OP described how normal people including Marxists do not adhere to the credo. I found it paradoxical as I do not find rationalists strictly adhering to the credo either, in that sense they do have much more in common with Marxists: they do have materialist utilitarian moral philosophical system (or one can almost dare say theology) build up ground up from first principles with some transhumanist transformative project. It is a philosophy created outside of mainstream, a system created by outsider "basement dwelling" philosopher with prolific writing and slight ties to rich donors. I wanted to point out this myopia to OP.
"Dangerous information exists" isn't incompatible with the idea that you should try to believe true things
The credo is much stronger than that, it puts the Truth as ultimate value, not as just something aspiring or something one "tries" to adhere to but abandons for something else in presence of "dangerous" information. The credo is not "that which can be destroyed by the truth should be unless it is dangerous to do so". Of course you can argue what you do, but then there is no need for edgy sounding guru lines like the credo. You would then just have ordinary thing like "try to tell the truth whenever you can" - it almost sounds something people like Peterson could say actually.
Nothing you said here is even remotely like belief in untruth. Trust authority figures? Also a means of determining the truth, because the whole reason you're trusting them is that you think they're right!
Of course it does. I can say that I believe New York Times or Eliezer Yudkowsky or The Pope or I can trust the Science. If you pick up bundle of beliefs some of them are for sure going to be untrue. This is a common way how people get to believe untrue things. And this is also the way rationalists pick up their beliefs, unlike some scientific sounding first principles reasoning. So again, there is not that much of a difference between rationalists and just regular informed people, in fact from what I noticed rationalists are putting too much faith into their own thought leaders.
That's just common sense!
Slow down, we are talking about rationalists, I am not that sure how far the appeal to common sense can carry you here. Again, I am maybe too harsh as most rationalists are just normal people who actually have some common sense, except that the whole rationalist ethos is about overcoming commonsensical reasoning on many things and there really are some people over there that can take these things maybe too literally. That's my whole point.
Seriously though, there's whole reams of decision theory stuff about how you shouldn't lie!
Except if it is dangerous to tell the truth, we already covered that, right?
I think that all this language about how one is rationalist but one should also put numerical credences (ideally down to decimals) to one's beliefs and how one should be careful about context of information and source of my views and how in the end it should all kind of feel "normal" - it all is the usual way of how rationalists say a simple thing everybody knows in a complicated way. Man, practice some source hygiene, work on your thinking and trust your intuition a bit. On most beliefs one would be in line with majority of informed people.
Paradoxically it is always the weird shit where rationalists are touting their supposed first principle revolutionary approach, where they are espousing mantras like that which can be destroyed by the truth should be. I am talking about things like saving ants or taking drugs or defending some sexual deviancy or other defense of some weird shit that nerds really want to rationalize. Guess what, my intuition screams "red alert".
georgioz
9mo ago
LTV, on the other hand, seems like not that bad of a take for someone operating in the mid 19th century (and a pretty good take for someone operating in the late 18th century like Smith was).
It was bad take even back then. A common counterargument used was that of literal gold digger during Gold Rush who lucked out and struck gold vein on his very first day. It is easy to understand example showing that value is created by demand as opposed to some "unit of labor". Of course there are other example of where value is created by some cosmic luck besides finding mineral riches or ancient treasures buried underground - ideas being another prime example. A lot of transformative scientific or product ideas were invented randomly or as a byproduct of something else, they are product of talent and circumstances. LTV was dead on arrival.
I am a very weird human being. When I first read this stuff on LessWrong as a teenager I remember being very annoyed by how smug they seemed about "hey, breaking news, you should believe true things and not false things."
I have similar peeve, but because of exactly the opposite reasons: this whole credo is obvious bullshit. Even rationalists like Yudkowsky do not really practice it, take as an example his annoyance with Roko's Basilisk idea leaking or his secrecy around methods how he can get out of the box pretending to be AI. Why doing that, just set the truth free. If it destroys countries or even the whole humanity, then it should be destroyed, right? The cold truth is defined as the highest value so what is the problem.
Anyways, there are many ways how one can save "belief in untruth". One way is to defer to an authority: I cannot evaluate if Many Worlds or Spontaneous Collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, but I think expert A is trustworthy so I take his word for it. But in a way this is is belief about expert and not belief about the thing, so it is cheating a bit. Another way to do that is to have epistemic humility, Scott Alexander himself once remarked how he was able to argue untrue points very effectively toward people with less knowledge and his takeaway was to be a lot more skeptic when it comes his own views as he could also have been misled. Ironically rationalists themselves accept this premise, their whole shtick is how AI can lie to reach its goals. Similar idea is also expressed by yet another rationalist glib of it all adds up to normality, which basically urges you to be skeptical about too "weird" conclusions and sticking to your intuition a bit, even if evidence seems strong.
Now given the utilitarianism of rationalists I do not trust them at all, there is nothing preventing them to lie to me to reach their goals of maximizing utils or whatever. In fact they are quite upfront about this. The third one is right there in the rationalist Bayesian thinking idea. All it takes for me to defend any belief is to set my prior to very low value so it is incredibly hard for it to be flipped in my lifetime. And I can still signal my sophistication: my credence of idea X being true shifted a bit in light of new circumstances and recalculated posterior, but I still find it unlikely for X to be true. That is unless Scott Alexander or Yudkowsky or other gurus of rationalist faith say otherwise, then my posterior will shift dramatically.
Now maybe this all sounds too harsh, I do not really mind it as much. But one really has to treat rationalism as yet another pretentious internet fad, as an infotainment. There are very useful things I learned and for it I am very thankful. But I think dropping the guru sounding shit or weird stuff like defending value of insect life or polyamory or any of the awfully convenient overlap of supposedly cold rationalists with hippie/techbro Silicon Valley culture and ethos is advised. But sometimes I think I am not harsh enough - listening to Yudkowsky lately I would not be surprised if he founded some Unabomber style cult set out to bomb datacenters to prevent AI apocalypse, which would be logical step if they really believed in the Truth of apocalypse so firmly and unshakenly. So there is that.
This is the pattern of "we are brutal toward our friends so just imagine what we will do to our enemies" that carries throughout history. For instance Mongols themselves practiced group guilt where the unit of 10 men were responsible for things done by every member, similarly the unit of 100 was responsible for things every 10th did and so forth. So if you get an order to gather ears or arms of innocent victims as a proof of genocide in soon to be razed city, there is 9 of your comrades breathing on your neck willing to literally kill you if you do not conform - or it will be their neck on the chopping block. Similar pattern of behavior can be seen in WW2 Imperial Army - when POWs complained about beatings and horrible conditions, it was relatively "reasonable" distance from normal Japanese soldier who faced harsh disciplinary punishment as well. And lastly I could see that pattern when listening to some intercepted phone calls to Russian soldiers in Ukraine from their families. It was interesting to hear wives or even mothers of soldiers who were just told that their "loved ones" just barely survived almost whole wipe of their unit and that they very likely will die or get severely injured - only for it to ignored and the discussion turned onto salary or what can the soldier send back home.
Of course the whole thing is much more frightening for members of these communities.
I as European welcome this. Different example is that for instance to call something butter in EU, it has to have between 82 and 90% butterfat and maximum of 16% water. So what happens in practice is that you have brand name of your local diary producer with Butter name on it and you know what you get. If you see something else, then it is some fake product. I consider this as very valuable for the sake of informing the customer about the quality and content of the product.
Now this is nothing new, the draft version of the famous Communist Manifesto was called Confession of Faith.
Also I think that Marxism can actually be saved if viewed under the lenses of earlier works by Marx, especially The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. For instance this passage:
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.
This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.
and later
It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.
See, the ultimate product of labor is not a commodity or service, it is the worker itself and through him the whole society. The proletariat embarks on the project of producing The New Soviet man, that is the true valuable product. This is something that machines or animals or slaves or even wage laborers cannot do, because animals and machines are ontologically incapable of such a thing while slaves and workers are alienated from their labor by capitalists. In fact capitalists themselves are alienated from their own labor, working on communist project would help them. You see, seizing the means of production and creating socialist society is only intermediary step before free proletariat finishes the project and abolishes private property by recreating and transforming the man itself into a new social species-being (so called socialist "humanizing"), it is only then that the communism will finally be successfully tried. In the meantime we have to prepare grounds for attempt number 49.
See, the Marxist faith restored all it takes is just a little bit of New Age sounding quackery, welcome to 19th century German philosophy. You can forward this to the OP, they can thank me later.
georgioz
9mo ago
Yep, the first one seems to be the official explanation so far. It seems implausible but it is the one that may be pushed, so we will hear about it.
As with most tyrannies - where we sometimes literally have to read from the tea leaves - this thing with Prigozhin is also quite an opaque situation. So far I gathered multiple possible explanations related to the crash, each depending on different assumptions and each opening more questions than it answers:
-
Shooting down of the airplane was indeed a mistake, which feeds into the narrative that Russians are incompetent and all that.
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The plane was shot down by Prigozhin's enemy without Putin's approval. There are plenty of people in the army who can do this including low ranking soldiers. This escalates power struggle in Putin's orbit.
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The plane was shot down as a gift to Putin, a gift Putin did not want to recieve.
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The plane was shot down on Putin's direct order and with his full knowledge, but even then there are multiple possibilities related to the fact that it happened two months after the "coup"
- 4a) Putin needed two months to try some alternative nonviolent path, it did not pan out so he took Prigozhin down. What did he try to do and why?
- 4b) Putin needed two months to do something to Prigozhin's power base before he dared such an open move as shooting the plane down. Is Putin so weak that he could not do what he wanted sooner?
These are just a few possibilities and assumptions, you will of course see more including theories that the plane was shot down by Ukrainians or CIA or Prigozhin's enemies inside Wagner and who knows what else. The whole situation is a mess and nobody knows the truth. Which is a reason why we will see all sorts of people fitting the story to their already preexisting narrative. Beware.
georgioz
9mo ago
This is so underrated comment, it really is an unspoken bubble. The demographic change is huge, especially in Southeast Asia where people born in 50s or 60s are often from large families of 5 to 6 while their children have one child or are childless. I have a friend who is single child of single children on both parents side. He has a wife who is also single child although she herself has an aunt. But in general their combined family is incredibly small, if my friend's parents die he will have no living family in this world. This is the family of the future.
I have many uncles and aunts and number of cousins that I being me would probably mix some names. It is such a vast difference in social experience. My experience is just blip in history, it is a rare transition towards inevitable modernity.
It is a little bit more complicated. While Robert Fico won the election, his party got 42 seats. Together with Slovak National Party (SNS) who is also pro-Putin and "anti-war" who got 10 seats he only got 52 seats. He requires at least 76 seats but more realistically 80+ in order for his government to be stable. The issue with SNS party is that there is only one person who actually is a member of the party, the rest were internet celebrities who got enough personal votes to get into parliament. It is hard to see how SNS will be unified platform with so many idiosyncratic people in there to put it mildly.
Nevertheless Fico needs another party into the government, the Hlas party created in 2020 by former Smer (Fico's party) member, one Peter Pellegrini. Despite his party only having 27 seats, Pellegrini is now the kingmaker between Fico and anti-Fico bloc led by Progressive Slovakia. Pellegrini now positioned himself as he is in the middle of this conflict, playing potentially for both sides. However he is not only kingmaker, he requires that he himself will be prime minister despite his party having third largest number of seats. And the thing is, that Pellegrini wants to be viewed as a "standard politician" not pro-Putin but also not pro LGBT in order to keep his image. So I doubt that any government with him in it (which is basically 99% chance at this point) will change the stance too much.
Also just as an afterthought, I have to rant a little bit. Fuck Ukrainian government for their immense stupidity - and I am talking as somebody who supports the Ukrainians financially and who is not squeamish to buy guns by my personal donations. Literally days before the election in both Slovakia and Poland, Ukrainians decided that it is a good time to sue both countries for agricultural export/import issue. Of course this was picked up by all anti-Ukrainian parties where now they were the protectors of small farmers against Ukrainians and so forth. What a misstep - the glorification of the literal SS-man in Canada was also played on social media. So what I am saying is that there was no need for disinformation, all that was needed was for people to put together real compilations of how Ukrainians mean harm to Slovakia and how members of PS want to trans your kids and so forth. Who needs disinformation if information is damning enough.
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