laxam
9mo ago
Well, it would be more productive if you could explain what you think are the relevant ways in which the analogy fails
I did, right at the beginning: there were many more powers involved in the international politics of WWI than there are in the Ukraine war.
On top of that, we have a sufficiently high contrarian population that going too hard for your side might even just wind up generating sympathy for the other side directly.
They don't need me for that. Western contrarians have decided Russia is Really The Good Guy all on their own (well, mostly).
laxam
10mo ago
I don't know if you remember the era well or not, but I do. The Republican Party of that time wasn't 'neocon' (a term in ridiculously bad odour, something no one wanted to be associated with), this was the TEA Party party. And they delivered, at least partially as a way of being seen as fighting Obama. We got several government shutdowns or near shutdowns, budget fights for the ages, and Sequestration, which included deep cuts into ostensible sacred cows like the defense budget (something I can't imagine the 'neocon' boogiemen ever doing).
Looking back, it's a shame we didn't do more. The Federal fiscal situation is out of control and is on schedule to get worse, not better, as time goes on. I was outright disgusted when the Biden administration bragged about keeping cuts to 1% in 2023 budget negotiations. We'll have a crisis on our hands within the decade because we failed to do enough in the 90s (no balanced budget amendment), we failed to do enough in the 2010s (no path to balance and the tax cuts under Trump), and we're failing to do anything right now.
laxam
8mo ago
They 'ratfucked' him because they were fully aware a self-identified socialist would get crushed in an American election and stood the chance of poisoning their brand for an extended period of time.
laxam
10mo ago
Slave-owners were the highest class of European Americans. Borderers (in Appalachia) were not the normative background of slave-owners who were pedigreed Anglo-Saxons.
Yeah, this isn't close to true. It was kind of true in the 18th century but, when Westward expansion hit the Appalachians and the Revolution happened, New Wealth became extremely common in the Old South West. Andrew Jackson was not from the 'highest class of European Americans'. Plenty of slaveowners in Alabama or Mississippi or Arkansas or whatever has borderer background.
Not to mention that not all plantations were vast affairs with hundreds of slaves. Plenty of slaveowners had just a few slaves and these people would be almost entirely of lower class background back East.
laxam
8mo ago
Out of your list, I think only Shapiro and Moore are actual national possibilities. The rest are some variation of Blue Scott Walkers or nobodies whose current media attention is pretty much an in-kind campaign contribution.
laxam
9mo ago
Marxist in the sense the orthodox Marxists were Hegelian
Except in the sense that Hegelianism means something more specific that Marxism isn't, a lot of what's wrong with Marc absolutely comes from an over reliance on Hegel. Marx was just another German working in a tradition of German historicism, but he took on a particularly Hegelian form of historicism that turned out to be congenial with generating evil outcomes.
laxam
9mo ago
Thus, it may be formally correct, according to the "rules-based international order"/maps drawn up by Anglos and their allies, that the 1948 war constituted an initial attack by the Lebanese against Israel, but if you don't put much stock in Western mapmaking then it is easy to instead see as a desperate attempt by a people to resist the occupation of part of their lands.
That rules based international order is what gives them any rights in the first place. Without it, they're peasants who need to be taught their place, so complaining about them being attacked by the greater power is foolish. If they didn't want to be hurt, they should have stayed out the way, like the little people have been doing for millennia.
laxam
10mo ago
Right, but if you started poor somewhere it was realistic to save up and get that land, that's the best circumstance to be poor in: you're not going to be stuck impoverished. That's someplace it's significantly better to be poor in than in London at the same time.
laxam
10mo ago
The failure to prevent a unified Germany is pretty much what I mean when I say Britain 'failed [to] balance sufficiently'.
laxam
10mo ago
It was at the time, although progressivism was a dead word that only got revived in the 90's after conservatives succeeded in making 'liberal' a dirty word.
laxam
10mo ago
Against Clinton, that's not as much an anchor as it should be. She was the anti-charisma and had the reputation of a flaming pile of shit among the general public.
I think pretty much any Republican who could speak coherently and with even a modicum of force could have beaten her in 2016, but Republicans like Jeb or Rubio would have sparked off a base revolt, anyway, while in office. Only someone who could credibly pursue immigration restriction would have been able to please the base and those two are the exact opposite.
laxam
10mo ago
If it took us three generations to get here, it'd be unreasonable to expect us to take less than three generations to go back. Baby steps.
laxam
10mo ago
This is after about a century of reforestation. Parts of the East coast used to be just as intensively cultivated/settled as any part of Europe. Massachusetts now has significantly more forest than it did in the 1920's, for example.
laxam
11mo ago
Don't forget: they were also battle hardened after a decade of war against Iran.
laxam
9mo ago
I really don't have any more problem with the guy you hate than I do any of the other people described in those articles. They're not my type of people in general and I find them all equally loathesome.
But the author of the article?
I hate communists, so I hate her most of all.
It’s watching power refine and reproduce itself
Until someone does the careful, long work of going back through the life of sociology since Marx and methodically removes his influence on the field, it is irreparably tainted and anyone who is a sociologist or uses their terminology should be treated with suspicion by default.
laxam
9mo ago
It may well be that a reasonable balance for ports vs port workers involves this thug and his hangers-on being sent off to prison for economic wrecking, mass sackings and prompt automation.
Good.
But similarly reasonable balances may be imposed on unruly, arrogant tech-bros by the rest of society.
Good.
Productivity is the source of wealth. Holding productivity back in pursuit of rents is how you get extended (ie. century long) periods of economic stagnation.
What happens when we automated the dock workers, automated the factory workers, automate the retail workers... who will be left to go on strike when they automate us? And then where is our leverage to negotiate anything in the future?
What does happen when they automate all the farm work? Where will we go?
-- Farm laborer, 1860, when 70% of the population worked in agriculture.
laxam
9mo ago
American treaty obligations. Tripwire forces. Things that represent an actual threat to Russian attempts to use military force to restart the conflict.
laxam
8mo ago
The arrogance: the email server.
For a second I forgot about the specific Hillary context and reacted to this with, "What's wrong with Exchange admins!?"
laxam
8mo ago
a rare trait in politicians
It's pretty common in Presidents for the obvious reason that you have to be top 1% in several aspects of politics to get the office. The only modern President I can think of (say, post 1980) who doesn't have a reputation for being personally funny and charming was HW (and, maybe, Biden, although he supposedly had his charms before decline set in).
laxam
9mo ago
On the other hand, it’s a very very useful tool to hide incompetence and grift. Everything the government doesn’t want people talking about seems to be “Russian Trolls” and it’s become a sort of go to excuse for why people are saying things the government doesn’t want to hear on social media.
I don't see any particular reason both can't be true.
laxam
9mo ago
There absolutely is such a law. Even in high theory, the situations where wages != Marginal labor product are situations of monopoly/monopsony, which are fought by breaking up the monopoly/monopsony. What do you think the proper word for a union with a chokehold on a service with an inelastic supply is? If you guessed monopoly, you'd be correct.
And it's funny you would bring up housing costs, which is an industry where construction productivity has been stagnant for most of a century and where severe supply restrictions are the underlying cause of price increases. This is another situation where the entrenched, rent-seeking interests need to be broken and the market allowed to function again, just like with the ports.
Breaking this union would be an unmitigated good for the country.
Ukraine already has that. What else you got?
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