georgioz
10mo ago
They way the discussion went was that Tucker asked Darryl what he is working on, Darryl responded that he is working on WW2 and the rest is history. To me it is insane to just lie about basic facts of your life just because it is an election year. But it is a good form of projection of how other people think.
It's not only Slovak media. Once you are marked as pro-Putin, the whole media complex parrots this endlessly even in the face of contrary evidence, I think there is some media incest in this manner. Examples regarding Fico from Reuters or Guardian or even Die Welt.
They are all lame, that is why if media say that AFD party is Pro-Russian, then it really is tough to know what to think about it, they just cannot report about these issues honestly. It really is terrible, because people do not have time to delve into these issues deeply and maybe they really are Pro-Russia. It is hard to tell.
georgioz
10mo ago
While BSW is of the 'refuse to cooperate with AfD' direction, they are also notable for stated opposition to supporting Ukraine with more military aid, though how hard they hold that view / what they might trade it away for in coalition-negotiation remains to be seen.
I have no special insight into German politics, but in Slovakia this pro-Russian and pro-Putin moniker was attached to the current prime minister Robert Fico before elections. Interestingly enough, one of the the first things he did post-election was a conference with Ukrainian prime minister Denys Šmyhaľ in the city of Uzhhorod, where he signed the treaty of military cooperation with Ukraine, expressed his support for Ukrainian EU integration as well as support for EU military package. The rhetoric from anti-Fico coalition then changed that he betrayed his voters and that he only wants to make money for his cronies who will provide the military assistance.
It is incredibly difficult to navigate this situation, I am just used to media lying and speaking from the both sides of their mouth. It is just sad state of things.
I used to despair that not only we're losing democracy, but The West in general is also trending in a similar way although slower. The entire western hemisphere seems to be becoming like Brazil, bit by bit, all sort of places that I used to admire in North America and Europe gradually resembles me of my own country. There's soon gonna be no champion of Free Speech, Small Government and so on in the global stage.
This reminded me an old article from Foreign Affairs called The Brazilianization of the World. It is a little bit more lefty critique for my taste, but some passages are eerie:
In political terms, Brazilianization means patrimonialism, clientelism, and corruption. Rather than see these as aberrations, we should understand them as the normal state of politics when widely shared economic progress is not available, and the socialist Left cannot act as a countervailing force. It was the industrial proletariat and socialist politics that kept liberalism honest, and prevented elites from instrumentalizing the state for their own interests.
The “revolt of the elites”—their escape from society, physically into heavily guarded private spaces, economically into the realm of global finance, politically into anti-democratic arrangements that outsource responsibility and inhibit accountability—has created hollowed-out neoliberal states. These are polities closed to popular pressures but open to those with the resources and networks to directly influence politics. The practical consequence is not just corruption, but also states lacking the capacity to undertake any long-range developmental policies—even basic ones that might advance economic growth, such as the easing of regional inequalities. State failure in the pandemic is only the most flagrant recent example.
Brazil’s ignoble history of irresolution and indeterminacy, coupled with a dualized society in which hustling is essential to survival, gave birth to Brazilian cynicism. Increasingly, the West is coming to ape this same pattern. Not only does there seem to be no way past capitalist stagnation, but politics is characterized by a void between people and politics, citizens and the state. The ruling class’s relation to the masses is one of condescension. Elites call anyone who revolts against the contemporary order racist, sexist, or some other delegitimizing term. They also advance outlandish conspiracy theories for why electorates have failed to vote for their favored candidate—most visibly with “Russiagate” in the United States and beyond. This phenomenon, dubbed Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome, only breeds further cynicism in Western publics, who are increasingly taken with conspiracy theories of their own. This is another Brazilian speciality: in a country with very low levels of institutional trust and plentiful examples of actual conspiracies, conspiracy theories flourish.
Revolts against the establishment, when they aren’t driven by QAnon-style derangement, wield the weapon of anti-politics, whereby not only formal politics, but representation and political authority itself are rejected. Anti-politics tends to result in either a delegitimation of democracy itself, leading to authoritarian rule, or it prompts technocrats to learn from populists, returning to the scene promising an end to corruption and real change. The result is the same sort of distant, out-of-touch politics that prompted anti-political revolts in the first place. Brazil’s history from 2013 to 2019 is this dynamic presented in pure, crystallized form. But the same pattern is visible in Italy’s Five-Star Movement, the anti-corruption protests that led to Viktor Orbán’s ascent in Hungary, Trump, and Boris Johnson’s technopopulist attempt to defuse Brexit.
I am from Eastern Europe and I was born into socialist country and lived my childhood through the tail end of communist regime and then the newborn democracy. I disagree with the author that this is the result of some neoliberal capitalist plot, this pervasive feeling of frustration, political apathy and resulting cynicism was defining feature of late-stage communist regimes as well. I'd say it is the feature of out-of-touch bureaucratic regimes, all too quick to use force to save their pretend legitimacy. Everybody shouts the slogans and lies and everybody knows that everybody knows it's all a farce. Actually it is even worse than that, if somebody has some ideals or expects some decent behavior, he is laughed at - especially if something wrong happens to him. It is certain level of schadenfreude - you stupid naive moron, you thought you could have some hope? You got what you deserve for not being as cynical as me.
Corruption is no longer viewed as something wrong, it is basically the normal way to live. Everybody knows that some professions are underpaid, that some palms have to be greased so it is absolutely normal that your doctor asks for a bribe, if only because he also has to bribe somebody else in order to keep his license. "Patrimonialism, clientelism, and corruption" is the oil that lubricates the whole machine, everybody understands and accepts it. Everything is so bleak, people find solace in their private spaces - their huts where they can escape for a brief time and forget the drudgery and hopelessness of their situation with elephant doses of alcohol. Yeah, it is quite depressing and I always get this feeling if I watch some local movies from 70ies and 80ies. You can almost feel it through the screen.
georgioz
10mo ago
It is still an apt parable. Go and buy canned food, with this inflation you would be king. The key thing is that good ant would also invest in his children to take care of him if he can no longer work thus “storing” and “saving” the labor.
georgioz
10mo ago
That is beside my point. There are things you can meaningfully save, mostly durable goods. You can build a house, buy pots and other goods that can last your lifetime. You could store some canned goods and so forth. You can also do this on larger scale of building national capital: highways, bridges, factories that may work a long time.
However unavoidably you cannot save labor. It has to be provided when you need it. Your house and highways etc. need to be maintained, the factory needs labor for production. You can sell your assets when old to current population in presence of rule of law and get labor of youth in exchange. But if there are less workers, then your assets will buy less. That is the problem in any society to be solved.
In the extreme situation of the movie “Children of men”, where all that is left is 70+ old infirm people, they are fucked. There are no firemen and policemen and bakers and linemen and nurses and doctors and all the other essential workers to sell your gold to. The same it happens in wars and civil unrest where your gold necklace will buy you loaf of bread. You will die of hunger in your bed. Technically, you individually could save more, but it would be impossible society wide.
The same logic applies in 50% or 90% young population collapse scenario. That is the point.
georgioz
10mo ago
According to Morgan Stanley 41% women aged 25-44 were single and childless in 2018 and the number increases around 0.4% a year. Also according to Pew the married women are voting more conservative, it's the strongest predictor of conservative leaning women, 26 points difference compared to never married women.
There is something happening to political coalition making, it is novel and I agree also dangerous.
georgioz
10mo ago
The important part is "displays of party loyalty". You did not want "true believers" next to you, when some high ranking general or other party member wanted something not exactly communist-like, such as expensive western gadget or other contraband. I think it is similar to HR ladies today - you want to have good activist cred by posting the right flag on your social media and all that, but you should also not interfere if the CEO has some fun with his assistant on his business trip. It's the same logic why Trudeau surfed through his blackface episode so easily - everybody just pretended it does not matter, because if you said anything, then maybe you would garner some level of (whispered) sympathy, but then find yourself suddenly redundant and replaced.
This is what is so comical about all the activists: the corruption and nepotism is not the bug, it is the feature of all these stupid systems. Communism was tried so many times and it always devolves into some kind of nightmare, often of fascist variety. It is because it is baked into the system.
No more state pension. Require everyone to have saved enough to cover their own retirement and associated medical costs or have had enough economically-active children to cover them.
The retirement problem is not a problem of "saving". All pension systems are just redistribution of current production, it does not matter if it is "financed" by taxes or selling some assets or in any other way such as coerced slave labor of future productive population. The problem is that you as an elderly will need things in the future: you will need fresh bread, a surgery, working power lines and maintained house. These things can only be provided by productive people that are being born right now. You cannot have a surgery now in reserve for the future, you cannot store electricity in order to have it in 50 years when the blackout happens due to insufficient maintenance. If there are not enough people born to be future doctors, bakers, linemen etc. - then you will not get product of labor of these unborn people. Whatever you save will be eaten by inflation.
AGI/Mass automation
Okay, so we will all live in in Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism utopia in 20 years. And we will also have endless electricity from nuclear fusion any time soon. Also as a sidenote - not many people really believe this, otherwise they would just sell their assets now when they still have value, to enjoy some hookers and booze - since they will have robot hookers and endless booze in 20 years. So they should smooth out their lifetime consumption, that would be the most logical strategy, right? Like people selling their houses if they believe that apocalypse will arrive in 5 years. I am curious if you are doing so, since you are so sure about these utopian predictions about AI and automation.
Biotech revolutions
Of course, another technological solution is around the corner.
Degrowth
What an euphemism for economic and societal collapse. It will just be nice "degrowth" landing, no other issues as people are just dying on the streets in the middle of blackouts and wars for shrinking resources. A little bit of population and economic "degrowth" will not hurt anybody.
So, all in all I'm not massively worried about declining TFR as a long-term issue.
I am, mostly because TFR is collapsing, and collapsing fast. Many people point out to South Korea as an example where the TFR dropped to record low of 0.68 in 2023, while already being bellow 1.2 for over two decades already. And it may not be the bottom, TFR in Seoul was 0.55 and is also falling. So let's look at simple math if TFR remains at this 0.7 level. One hundred young Koreans will have 35 children and 12 grandchildren. That is almost 10 times drop of young population in just two generations, this is catastrophic level of population collapse, way more than Black Death that ravaged Europe in 14th century resulting in 50% drop of population. The "nice" thing about demography is that it is baked in. There were just 230 000 babies born in South Korea in 2023. This means that there will be at most 230 thousand young 20 years old Koreans in 2044 who may go on and do all the necessary jobs that the country will require of them in two decades, like soldiers to stop North Koreans, firemen, policemen, scientists and everything else. There will be no more of them in next couple of decades.
I think one of the comments was also on to something when he said that cancel culture is also about action out-of-proportion to the perceived transgression. Which is now not only about the loss of reputation and resulting disassociation, but also deplatforming or in extreme cases firing from the job. Potentially also debanking or who knows, maybe in the future your heating or electricity could be shut down.
“once you cease to be of value to others or once you experience too much pain, you willingly die, which is honorable.” By value to others, I mean that you can no longer relay to the young any worthwhile stories or wisdom, can no longer provide any emotional warmth to others, your redeeming personality traits have decayed, and you have too many costly medical problems.
You are coming to this from utilitarian standpoint and here I'd have to agree with you, support of euthanasia is perfectly fine in that horrible worldview. The only obstacle here is something like parasitic relationship that some utilitarians have toward deontological moral systems such as Christianity - where they keep some of the deontological axioms, and then slap them onto their version of utilitarianism in order to prevent themselves going full retard, also resolving some unpleasant cognitive dissonances. Something like Adding Up to Normality where "eating babies" is for some reason axiomatically bad without further explanation. I could have argued with you on your grounds, the usual angle would be mentioning let's say mentally handicapped people who share most characteristics with seniors you mentioned and then some - and then go with that. But I won't, as I think the whole premise of utilitarianism is wrong.
What we see is real-time dissolution of these unspoken axioms as more and more people are raised outside of traditional morals, and who find these axioms less relevant. So we now perfectly accept that it is okay for young mother to kill her own baby in her womb just to improve her career prospects. Nothing to see here, in fact let's throw a party. We now accept that euthanasia is perfectly good option for 29 years old with depression to end her life. Yay, heroic doctors just eliminated bunch of negative utils from the universe, where is the champagne? I tend to think that this is the feature and not a bug of utilitarianism in its pure form. Euthanasia is just another of those lines, those "normality" axioms under attack. And you are just "not persuaded" and refuse irrational religious moral arguments that "life is sacred". Okay. Just beware, because in couple of decades somebody else may not be "persuaded" that things like "free choice" is sacred - it basically stems from some religious "bullshit" about how we were all created as morally equal or some such nonsense - and then they will just euthanize people for greater good.
So yes, I would argue that life is sacred and that euthanasia is wrong based on virtue ethics principles. You will remain unpersuaded I guess, but then you neither persuaded me that euthanasia is such a terrific thing and we should all jump on that bandwagon. Mostly because I do not submit to your utilitarian moral reasoning with your sacred utils.
georgioz
11mo ago
I agree with other posters. This win to me feels more like a "win" when during the pandemic the governments got away with almost all they wanted to do including complete lockdowns. The problem here is that while it was a formidable show of combination soft and hard power, it did not actually deal with the underlying issue of the pandemic. And this show of power came at the cost of further degradation in their perceived legitimacy. It ultimately won them nothing even mid-term.
Does anybody think that by jailing some twitter commenters, the underlying conflict on the ground will get any better? That there will be no more stabbings, terrorist plots and more of the low-level simmering race and religious war? The show of force is the show of weakness.
You conveniently omit the fact that despite his forgiving nature, Caesar was killed by people he forgave and another destructive Civil War ensued. What happened with Augustus is that he learned his lesson. He was murderous in his purges of hardcore elite - he had no issues with Marc Anthony's murder of Cicero and he ruthlessly persecuted hundreds of senators and other opponents. He also utilized other people like his second in command Agrippa to supposedly "overdo" some of the atrocities, only for Augustus to step in as a merciful one to chastise his supposedly overzealeous pet general while of course building huge temples for him as well.
It is similar to denazification: you need to have a way out for some people, but you also have to ruthlessly crush your main opponents and hang them like dogs in order to provide some incentives to defect. Otherwise you only invite snakes like Brutus to stab you in the back.
It's the same principle behind GoT meme of any man who must say I am the king is no true king. Also in general in organizations the position/authority is the weakest form of leadership compared to other forms such as competence, charisma etc. Telling somebody to do something because manager said so is the weakest form of authority you can use as last resort after inspiring and explanation failed and it is a sign of weakness.
georgioz
1yr ago
Oh yes, they do. You are using the a similar argument to the one "CRT is not taught in schools, it is just some obscure academic work". Analogically, normie Christians probably do not read St. Augustin or they could not say what is the latest theological debate. But they breath air and drink the result of all that in their water. Everybody knows that the word nigger is magical and can ruin your career real quick even if used in joking manner or quoting somebody. Trans stuff is just the latest iteration on that and it is headed in the same direction.
georgioz
1yr ago
All your examples are from The Motte, which is literally place for heretics - outside of this place it is considered a heresy. Go and ask Chat GPT for a transgender joke for instance. Most people breath the current religion and they subconsciously know that they transgress. Saying that Rosa Parks was a filthy whore in some joking manner and laughing about it is somewhat icky, right? That is what I am talking about.
georgioz
1yr ago
Transgender people and other similar categories are now considered sacred and any jokes around these topics are thus considered as blasphemy according to our new official religion. As a comparison, you can easily find thousands of images and articles by googling for "Virgin Mary Whore", try that for some actual modern saints like Rosa Parks.
To be clear, nobody actually wants to abolish the words "mother" or "woman." They want to use them in what they assert is "correct" manner, i.e. to refer to parents or people who personally identify as women, irrespective of sex.
By the way in Hegelian jargon it is exactly what is meant by abolish, which just a translation of the word aufheben. The idea is that we are not abolishing the thing, we are just "enriching" and "transforming" the meaning of contradictions in binaries such as man/woman. This is the idea behind other leftist/social justice utopian thinking: we want to abolish the police by resolving contradictions and making police unnecessary under proper Social Justice. We want to abolish private property, because under communism there is no longer need for such a thing.
If you ignore the ideological aspect and the silliness of the phrasing, there's a certain set-theoretic elegance to it.
If you ignore ideological aspects, then we would not be here in the first place. There is no set-theoretic elegance to confuse meaning of words such as using the same word of "woman" for both a female member of homo sapiens and some invented concept of self-ID gender: you would use a different string for such a thing, let's say "transwoman"? The same with regards to removing the word "breast" as a female organ with milk ducts from our vocabulary altogether just because someone's ideology is offended by it. I don't see any elegance in removing valid concepts that describe biological reality, just deliberate confusion.
I actually think it is the opposite. President is there to lead and communicate policies of his team toward the public. If his staff members are the writers, president is the actor or comedian delivering the lines and bits. Presidents are supposed to debate, they represent their administration while giving State of the Union, they should represent the state behind closed doors meetings with other world leaders, they should inspire in times of need and be the face of the administration and above all else they should provide legitimacy for the government they represent, as they are the person that people get to vote for as opposed to their PR managers or analysts.
This take that person of POTUS is just unimportant position and that a corpse remotely controlled by unnamed staffers could do as good of a job, and that people really should just vote opaque party machinery and believe in the best is absolutely surreal to me. If the politicians can no longer be bothered to even pretend that they care, the legitimacy of the power is gone. It is incredibly dangerous direction imho.
From my perspective the last 5 years has been the easiest time to significantly beat the market in the last 40 years by a large margin. Events you can see coming from outer space and almost risk free investments that take advantage of them (if you manage small amounts of money).
I have seen similar smug attitudes during COVID, people who raked in cash when stocks plummeted between January and March 2020 by almost 25% were patting themselves on the back how smart they are and laughed at other people. And they knew that the worst is only ahead of us: lockdowns, supply chain issues and all that. Only for the market returning to previous heights by September, followed by huge surge up until January 2022. Many people who doubled down on bearish prediction in March not only lost all their gains from early 2020, but lost everything in that gamble.
Just give me a break, streets are lined up with homeless market gurus like you who just know how to beat the market.
Sure, I love my boy James Lindsay including his extensive deep dive into Paulo Freire - with Pedagogy of Oppressed being the 3rd most cited work in humanities. Kaufmann himself gives a lot of praise to Lindsay and he by no means denies these influences.
But that is not the whole story, Kaufmann argues that it is moderates and "bleeding-heart liberals" who enable free reign of these ideas. The way he put it is that after defeat of economic socialism at least in its most radical form of planned economy, liberals still do not understand where the borders on social issues are. This is what enables woke to rampage through our society. It is a little bit depressing but also encouraging - most people do not actively believe these revolutionary thoughts such as Critical Race Theory or Queer Theory - they just want to be and sound as if they are kind and moral. On one hand they can be easily duped into various extremes, but on the other hand it means that potential pushback may not be as tough as many people think.
I recently listened to podcast of Jordan Peterson with Eric Kaufmann and Kaufmann explained the phenomenon of woke as coming in waves. With first being in the 60ies in old Days of Rage where the left radicals first pushed this stuff and actually managed to carve out huge cultural concessions especially for blacks in form of Black Studies departments and such. Then there were eighties where people thought it was all behind them, it was age of Regan and neoliberalism and winning the Cold War - but at the tail end of 80ies and 90ies came the second woke wave in academia with intersectionality and and queer stuff. It also subsided a bit after 9/11 and Bush era of War on Terror only for woke to reemerge in 2010s.
I think he is right, saying that the woke is subsiding to me feels like previous times of pause. Kaufmann is especially skeptical as the millennials and zoomers are strongly in favor of woke ideas in various researches - especially women. If there will be some pushback next few years we may expect 4th wave maybe in the 2030s where the phenomenon may be rekindled with some new additions.
georgioz
1yr ago
Exactly. People should always have the infamous "bear vs man in a forest" question on their minds when reading anything women declare in public. There is great deal of GSR - gossiping, shaming and rallying as tools of relational warfare in any such situation. This is no different, just bunch of old hags trying to use the old tricks of how all women are wonderful and how all men are such pigs, possibly with some juicy story to make themselves look interesting. These diatribes are almost without factual value outside of some meta level anthropological evidence of this behavior.
Typically, German techno is LGBTQ-coded and events can feature anything-goes public displays of sexual activity.
I think this controversy fully displays to what extent the whole "LGBTQ community" narrative is actually astroturfed. I don't even have to use my arguments, Douglas Murray said it better here. Apparently "homophobic", AfD party is very popular with gays in Germany. I'd dare to guess that gay men are the majority of techno party goers, so it does not surprise me the least that Deutschland für die Deutschen, Ausländer raus! would be popular among them. It is incredible to read through the article and watch the cognitive dissonance in real time.
Compared to what? He was on the level of Stalin and at least in the same league as Franco or Mussolini who actually invented blackshirts as a precursor to Hitler's brownshirts, and we do not even go to atrocities committed by Italians in Ethiopia. Even "milder" leaders like Austrofascist leader Engelbert Dollfuss committed political violence in three figure range. We can go on, especially early post-WW1 period was full of atrocities such as during Polish-Soviet War or under Hungarian Soviet Republic and related red and white terror.
I think your sense of "normal" is highly curated by modern sensibilities and information available to you, which is vastly different to what people in Europe lived as "normal" for decade of their lives or more prior to WW2.
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