muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
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User ID: 1018
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
Isn't "service for the duration" the default assumption mostly everywhere? Only powers fighting far-off wars of little importance can afford to send soldiers on limited combat tours.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
ten to twenty years from now it will be generally accepted that Mistakes Were Made
I wish we had RemindMeBot? And is your prediction that general sentiment is "Mistakes Were Made"? Or is it the general sentiment that some particular group of people are too stupid to vote? They are not the same claim. The latter seems to be generally shared sentiment about the political outgroup in the US politics since I can remember, so I am uncertain how it can be verified. Perhaps you intend a more specific claim about responses about stupidity that is more strong than more than stable trend of everyday political animus?
Nevertheless, I don't think observable presence of either kind of sentiment would tell much about the objective facts of the war. Watching MAS*H, made 20 years after the Korean war, the generally accepted sentiment of the producers of the show is that the Korean war was a mistake (naturally the show was for a large part about Vietnam, also thought a mistake). I don't think the evidence proves that either war was a mistake. South Korea is clearly a victory for all of mankind, only complicated by their later problems with their birth rate. Vietnam is more difficult to assess. There were faults in execution of the war, both strategically and on home front, but containing the Communism probably was not one of the mistakes. The domino theory worked, sort-of. Who knows what would have happened in SE Asia if North Vietnam would have had a shorter, more victorious war. What if Second Malaysian Emergency would have started earlier and turned out differently? Would Singapore had been the success story it has been?
In general, if the overall American mood during "Freedom Fries" moments are not the most rational, it is mostly information about the state of American mood than anything objective. The consistent prediction is, the American mood ten years before or after "Freedom Fries" is equal in its rationality, no matter its current polarity or valence.
Concerning casual discussion: The amount of death during the course of human history is of such magnitude, any discussion about it will appear nothing but casual or callous in comparison. Also an isolated demand.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
On this forum, the idea that Russia is some sort of right-wing paradise has been debunked many times.
True. Yet the arguments that amount "it doesn't make sense for Ukraine to fight, the peace would be a better deal for them" keep coming back in some form of other. The level of benevolence of Russian masters directly contributes to calculation of the cost of the peace.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
It can’t be dismissed as silly propaganda
The evidence presented can be dismissed as silly propaganda. The original comment had a link to tweet with evidence that consisted of some claims and 4 photos presumably from Tinder. Same level of evidence would have been present before the war. Claims "go to any bar in Europe" are cheap.
At minimum, one would need statistics to prove it. (Recollections of experiences with/observing presumed hookers in MENA countries and engaging in hypotheses about cultural factors of mountain Slaves does not count as interrogating the evidence.) How many of Ukrainians in Europe are women? Apparently approx 4 million. How many relative to respective demographics stayed in Ukraine? Apparently there was 12 million women aged 14-54 in Ukraine in 2018. Assuming everyone of the 4 million were women from the 12 million, it is a Large fraction, but not all or a majority. More exact statistics would be needed, because I presume there are kids and grandmas included in the 4 million. How many of the women of relevant are single, and how many are engaging in low-grade prostitution, how many are engaging more chaste forms of dating? Evidence not easily found. How many of sex workers are voluntary versus coerced? Evidence not easily found.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
True enough, if it happened today, or next year. But who knows about 2030, or 2035?
Russo-Georgian war happened in 2008. The war in Donetsk started in 2014. The current war started in 2022. As far as the political climate is concerned, a great many things may change in 6 years.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
You can basically say this about almost any state that existed for several centuries
There are plenty of the oldest states with centuries (heck, millenia) of continuity that have not done anything interesting for a century or two. (Switzerland. Sweden. Denmark.)
But let's grant it true for great powers and aspirants. The realist argument of international anarchy doesn't really favor any side: as long as any country has sought keep or obtain greater status by periodical war, the neighbors of the same country have been wary of such attempts, or they have been its willing dominions, or its already conquered unwilling puppets. In international anarchy, it is natural for Russia's neighbors to seek to preempt Russian actions (unless Russia can win them with soft power).
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
10d ago
They are Russian ethnically and live in a region historically called Novorossiya.
"Historically" is less impressive if one looks at the history: Novorussiya originates from the 18th century, roughly contemporary with Voltaire. Not yesterday but neither Ye Olde Times.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
15d ago
Thus it's really telling that this historical event and this historical event alone, unique amongst even genocides, it is DEMANDED that schools teach it happened AS MORAL MATTER, that unbelief is the ultimate sin.
We don't treat Holomordor this way, nor the killing fields, nor the plight of the Armenians, Hell in America and Europe you can argue that the Native Americans actually didn't have it that bad, or that slavery was the equivalent of the Russian serfs or just having a job, without being imprisoned in Austria or Germany.
This doesn't really compute. Claims about Armenians or Native Americans or the slavery in the US never had been a politically important topic in Austria and Germany. After the war, the arguments to the effect "Nazis were actually good guys / or better than the other guys in charge now / and all claims of their wrongdoings are lies" were politically important.
The equivalent question in the US context would be, dunno, debates about teaching evolution and creationism in the schools? There have been substantial efforts to have only one of the two included in the curriculum by disagreeing partisans. Extremely partisan behavior can be observed: many an internet atheist argued that teaching evolution is the truth, thus it is moral imperative to teach it happened (and equally imperative not to teach creationism). If given the power, some people would mandate it by law. Despite their moral posturing, the scientific evidence from archeology through biology to genetics is overwhelmingly supportive of the evolution.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
15d ago
They all claim that "resettlement" secretly became "extermination" but they cannot say who, when, where, or why the change, or point to any documentary evidence that this is something which actually happened.
This is untrue. There is evidence of various resettlement plans that were first considered. There is evidence some of the plans were found impossible or infeasible to implement (such as Madagascar plan), thus they were not implemented. Lublin plan was partially implemented. If you argue that every Polish Jew was resettled to Lublin, you should explain why (all) the Polish Jews could not be found in Lublin after the war.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
15d ago
I think they did. Eyewitness accounts is more reliable, especially concerning matters very unreliably transmitted by archeological evidence. Answering a question like yours, however, requires careful interpretation.
Concerning the question of Carthaginian child sacrifice: According to their press releases, archeologists from Oxford, presumable better positioned to interpret the evidence, argue that the literary evidence supports the archeological evidence. I also note that the press release mentions that other archaeologist disagree on the matter, and I have no expertise to evaluate their claims other than common sense.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
15d ago
As I wrote in my other reply, the delay is quite common. As a comparative example of unrelated WW2-era atrocity, Wikipedia article about Korean comfort women suggests that the Korean-Japanese debate and activism about comfort women in particular (opposed to Korean forced laborers and compensation in general) gathered steam in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Nothing in "Crusade in Europe", Churchhill's "Second World War", or De Gualle's "Memoires De Guerre" suggest anything of the sort."
Reading this claim is weird given you are replying to the very quotes from Crusade in Europe that are not "nothing" after you first argued there would be no quotes like them in the book.
One doesn't need advanced degree of historiography to realize that Eisenhower and Churchill have all the reasons to not care too much about Holodomor or German victims of Soviet brutalities or Boer victims of British concentration camps. Naturally neither can't make comparisons to Cambodia or Great Leap Forward because they had not happened yet in 1948.
The Claim of "the holocaust" is that the Germans uniquely set out to kill every jew in Europe, did so on an industrialized scale and with an efficiency never seen before in human, history, and that it is in a category of horror beyond any other genocide to ever exist including the Great Leap forward, Hoomodor, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and CERTAINLY worse than the Soviet mass killing and expulsion of the German Diaspora post 1945.
All of that "uniquely", "efficiency never seen before" stuff sounds something from History Channel and makes your argument is strawman-ish. Yes, unfortunately, some people have habit of talking about the historical events involving death with as dramatic words as possible while scary music loops in the background (see exhibit A, History Channel). However, gesturing at drivel and pointing out that it exists is evidence about the drivel, but not much else. The question being debated is not the uniqueness or the efficiency never seen before (mostly not the special status of the Holocaust in popular consciousness either): the question being debated is how many people died and how and when. If the overdramatic claims concerning the Holocaust inflate its relative scale compared to other mass deaths, the overinflated assessment of uniqueness and efficiency is not evidence people did not die.
Unrelated to any claims Eisenhower made or any reports he sent, according to the statistics and documentary evidence, the major portion of mass killing of Jews happened in the East. Places that are not Gotha. Eisenhower went to places like Gotha. However, the claims indicate that he wanted to report that he was horrified by things he did see,
In general, it is not particularly suspicious Eisenhower and Churchill and De Gaulle (I admit I have little idea what De Gaulle wrote) discuss atrocities targeting Jews in fewer than 5% printed words (1). People tend to ignore and forget and not learn in the first place about atrocities that are not personally relevant to them. The general pattern is that until the advent of modern electronic mass media, it took decades for any atrocities to became widely known and people to care about them. Nobody in the West cared about the Armenian genocide when it happened or soon afterwards. It became only known when Armenians managed to gain some international prominence with their complaints about the past genocide. When the Holodomor was happening, the West considered it a famine like other famines. People started talking about it until after the collapse of the USSR. Nobody outside Asia paid particular attention to Japanese atrocities in China and Korea, the legal cases about "comfort women" and like happened decades later.
The reason why it takes time for atrocities to become known in is natural: Soon after a genocidal mass murder, the survivors often were not in a position to advertise their plight. It takes some time to emigrate out from the immediate aftereffects of the atrocity, then it takes time build stable life, it takes time get interviewed and/or get organized and/or become the person collecting evidence, writing memoirs, books and reports. Only after the memoirs and books have been printed people start reading them. It takes some time for the books and reports to became widely read and gain staying power. (Like today, also yesterday people forgot most of the news, unless they were personally affected or specifically paying attention. Especially WW2 had lot of atrocities, unreliably reported, difficult to distinguish from propaganda.) Consider Belgium's king Leopold's atrocities in Congo: they were a cause celebre for a brief moment in ~1900, and then were mostly forgotten for nearly a century. Congo never became that prominent place, they did not organize successfully to publish their victimization in the West. Same goes for the British atrocities in Africa. The atrocities in Congo were "found again" only in the 1990s after it had became popular and important in the West to talk about all atrocities and colonial atrocities in particular. Today, with widespread instant electronic communication and cultural milieu where comparing preferred outgroup to Nazis is a powerful political weapon, the handling of atoricites in the media as they happend is different than it was in the past.
Also, as an aside, you making a big show of Ctrl-Fin "holocaust", which is a very puzzling point for you to make: I don't understand what you are intending to achieve by making it. Rudimentary search into the existing "official" source as Wikipedia reveals that yes, use of the word "Holocaust" started getting traction in the 1950s and became common in the "late 1960s". This is well attested and well documented. Not finding any records of usage of a word with its modern meaning in works published in 1948 is not surprising, it is expected given the other available documentation. Like the question of "efficiency never seen before", the evolution of terminology and popular consciousness of "the Holocaust" is not direct evidence about to what Germans did or did not.
(1 if we accept your claim, which I am reluctant to do, given that you first argued that Eisenhower didn't discuss the Holocaust, then as another Mottezen provided quotes where Eisenhower does discuss the camps related to German atrocities, you proceed to dismiss it as "nothing". What other claims are "nothing" in your reading but not in other people's reading?)
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
The line of thought goes, simplified, their society had elements that share commonalities with a modern conception of democracy (mid-lower level social landholding had some minor but existent social and economic power, the freemen had rights recognized by everyone in the "everyone knows that everyone knows" way, the ideas how the decisionmaking institutions are supposed to work). Thus it is a confound: perhaps the democratic commonalities contributed to weird by-the-books behavior. And these democratic elements formed social capital (knowledge and preconceived ideas how to do things, transmitted intergenerationally) making it easier to run democracy!20thcentury in ethos, not only rubberstamping the correct procedures in the books approved by philosophers. The idea that ethos part is important in other democratic societies is not exactly a new idea. ^1
Naturally all this is comparative. From what I gather, they Nordics were corrupt (still are corrupt, just less in comparison than some other countries), the amount of corruption waxed and waned depending on the politics. Also, we know of the corruption because the peasants suffering from its effects mounted numerous legal complaints registered in the legal system, existence of which is somewhat positive sign.
Or do you think Ben would nod approvingly if Mexico went full Carolus Rex
I don't know about Ben. I would grant the possibility that Mexico could be a better place after 200 years the state running the show as the supreme gangboss, not tolerating other bosses that those serving him, applying principles of consistent governance, basing his powerbase on the free small-mid-sized enterprises against the high capital. But 200 year long experiments are difficult to run and the economic situation of the lucrative narcotics trade is difficult to square.
Narcotics is bit like the resource curse: You get lots of profit that don't require investments to rest of the local economy which would result in long-term benefit to rest of the society. Not only that, the resource curse profits are much higher and more concentrated than what others can made from rest of economy. The outsized profit, concentrated, makes it possible to hire armed enforcers to enforce control and continuation of profitable business in the hands of its current owner, and make any problems to go away.
^1: Tocqueville writes about the mores of American democracy:
The manners of the Americans of the United States are, then, the real cause which renders that people the only one of the American nations that is able to support a democratic government; and it is the influence of manners which produces the different degrees of order and of prosperity that may be distinguished in the several Anglo-American democracies. Thus the effect which the geographical position of a country may have upon the duration of democratic institutions is exaggerated in Europe. Too much importance is attributed to legislation, too little to manners. These three great causes serve, no doubt, to regulate and direct the American democracy; but if they were to be classed in their proper order, I should say that the physical circumstances are less efficient than the laws, and the laws very subordinate to the manners of the people. I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country; whilst the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage. The importance of manners is a common truth to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as a central point in the range of human observation, and the common termination of all inquiry. So seriously do I insist upon this head, that if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important influence which I attribute to the practical experience, the habits, the opinions, in short, to the manners of the Americans, upon the maintenance of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object of my work.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
methinks the Wikipedia definition is self-serving to some sections of the West, too. I think it is plausible there to be a totalitarian state presenting itself run by a committee without the Leader.
A better definition would concentrate on the degree of total control of the society, both private and public, or aspirations thereof. Instead of merely being satisfied by frustrating their political opponents in the public political life and being the boss, a totalitarian wants to use power of state apparatus to get rid of opposing thought.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
"Comparatively democratic" is intended to be read literally, as in, comparatively more cratos in the hands of demos than in other parts of Europe. Not as, it was democratic as 20th century had democracies. But lack of serfdom since early Middle Ages, continuous presence of institutions for deliberative, representational decisionmaking, and right to participate (in the said institutions) granted to large part of population, all of that, it is the traditional social capital argument.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
The long gowns and unkempt beards are extremely unattractive for the average white/western person.
It sounds like you think all Muslims look like Taliban elders from the videotapes from 00s? Even the Taliban government today don't look like that. Beards: kempt.
In Europe, Muslim men recognizable as recent arrivals are sharply dressed, serious about their hair and beard and clothes. The style is perhaps weird mix of the 80s, 90s and 00s, but it definitely is a style and increasingly has been converging with the overall weirdness that is style in anno domini 2024, so it is difficult to tell who is the trendsetter here. Muslim women recognizable as Muslim women wear hijab or niqab (or random variations of long dress and head scarf that may or may qualify as a hijab.)
In any mass communication, the irony is like any subtext -- it is usually lost after a couple of steps unless you filter for audience to people who get the subtext. Internet hastens this process, but it is present in all youth cultures. Nobody knows if the kid puts up the poster ironically or as a statement or they like the person in the poster, their internal motivations and rationalizations are lost to the observers. How much of the Elvis craze or Beatlemania or Lisztomania or any altCoin was 'dead serious' right from the beginning? I think quite likely most people start participating first jokingly, not so seriously, perhaps ironically because of all the excitement and "cool kids are doing it too" effect. But after you have collected enough inertia in the movement, tribal group dynamics take driver's seat and then it is serious.
Suppose some youngsters adopt saying inshallah ironically. Next they adopt the non-ironic positive cultural signifiers (excessively shaking hands and having sharp haircuts?) Soon the shared cultural context is wholly mixed to point you can't tell lapsed Muslims from the lapsed Christians and Western atheists. The Westerners themselves no longer can't tell which parts they are doing ironically. Nothing ultiamtely wrong with it I suppose, that's how cultural exchange looks like. Not infeasible that if by that point Islam as practiced by the non-lapsed Muslims is still the same puritanical form as it is currently known, it will be the stronger evangelizing force and cultural attractor.
Not the only possibility, though. Religious space is field of constant competition and evolutionary pressure. Wouldn't be surprised if the competitive forms of Christianity or the dare you call it the secular state religion of rainbow flag will adopt features that make them competitive.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
Also Nordics/Protestants being stuck up by-the-book types was a stereotype well before Europe started moving towards democracy.
Less decisive historical observation than one may think, as the confound of comparatively democratic power structures in the Nordics goes all the way back before the French revolution. Things were meetings of free men since before the middle ages. When the Swedish realm adopted European style Riksdag of estates, they had a fourth estate of free land-owning peasants.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
20d ago
Although I realize there's a pathway from ironic to non-ironic, as famously happened with "based".
Far too common than people acknowledge. A leas this is how high fashion seems operate: first the select few wear something weird or outdated ironically or jokingly. The next day, it is the trend.
You don’t need to be a politician at 22 to be a politician at 60. They can go on the safer career paths (honestly prefer politicians with outside politics experience).
Sure. And my point kinda was, any random kid is going to better served by realistically geared aspirations and fully generic "how to be successful in life, at the margin" kind of lessons (less about becoming the president or going to Harvard, more about conscientiousness, habit forming, reading the room to observe true unwritten rules). If the kid has the special something to become the president, he/she will stumble upon that path by their own talents (or perhaps you already possess much more meaningful resources to help them than aspirations only, such as a trust fund or networks).
Truth is in a meritocracy especially with intelligence being highly hereditary you would expect the longer that meritocracy exists that elites would largely come from some form of elites (in Americas case it’s going to be dominated by the PMC or top 20%). The only way you get elites from the lower class with intelligence being hereditary is [...]
Unrelated, but there may be something wrong with that model, depending on how do you quantify "largely" and all the rest of the details. An example of a possible mechanic to consider: Consider differential birthrates in social strata. Suppose a fully deterministic hereditary model of genetic eliteness and the meritocratic elite has relatively less children than non-elite classes. Then, due to dwindling applicant pool, either the size of elite gets smaller each generation, or the brightest sons and daughters of plebeian background must be given opportunities to enter. Alternatively, if the meritocratic elite has relatively more kids but size of elite stays the same, in a couple of generations, there will be large class of nearly elite upper middle class class just below the threshold, with nearly the same genetic background as the members of elite. Due to random variation, some kids of this non-elite upper middle class again would have the merits to become elite again.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
27d ago
Doesn’t Ron Desantis disprove your rule that non-elites can’t achieve high office or even Joe Biden?
I agree with MaicTheTrue. Ron DeSantis is one individual. Think of base rates: there is only one Ron DeSantis. Perhaps a handful of other politicians with similar backgrounds. What is the probability your kid is going to be the next one?
Think it in terms of sports. Some individuals become the elite sport stars worth millions of dollars and have a pretty nice life until they retire. it doesn't change the fact that 99.x% of kids who want to become top players in a major league never become one. For a parent of perfectly ordinary good kid with ordinary good talents, it would be very irresponsible to encourage their kids to start on the path of all necessary requirements to become a top athlete (invest heavily in training and start their sports career in their teens). It makes sense if you have a pretty good probability that either your kid is in the top 1/10,000 talent bracket or if you are from gang-ridden favela without any other prospects and there is absolutely nothing to lose. Neither case applies to most people in the first world, where there is a secure career path option.
I believe it is quite the same thing if you want to become an elite political operative. You need right personality, some intellectual capacity, right social talents, in-born ambition, and looks (or charisma, which is often again, the looks). If the kid is not naturally popular in his/her group of kids and demonstrating the instincts of top political operative by age 11, I don't think it would be useful feed them the ambition to be a top politician.
Ambition is good thing, but it is better to direct it to useful pursuits.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
"Need" is a strong word. There are plenty of people willing argue that the US really didn't need to intervene in WW1 or WW2 or Korea or Vietnam or station Elvis and other assorted troops in Germany or doesn't need to defend NATO either. Generally, superpowerdom has been considered a prize worth the costs. Perhaps stakeholders in Washington decided it is longer worth it. But that is secondary to my argument.
I think it is mistake to infer that Ukraine is a niche scenario. It used to be a niche scenario (for couple of decades) partly because the US was the uncontested superpower. Starting a large-scale war that the US might notice was considered a bad idea. Ukraine is what a contested hegemony looks like. Putin made a calculated move presuming that the West overplayed their hand supporting the west-aligned Ukrainians and would not / can't supply Ukraine. And perhaps the Washington stakeholders decide, they won't. Same goes for Taiwan, and any other piece of territory previously under their hegemonic protection. It would imply the US will fight only unaligned small countries, not other great powers. The implication for any Middle Eastern or other small country is to quickly align themselves with any of other ascendant great powers so that they are not unaligned small country no longer. Probably the US would be fine. Isolation worked okay for China for a quite long time. But it is an admission of making an exit from the great power politics.
Second, it seems unwise to think only terms how Taiwanese or any other military situation would develop today or in 5 years' time while making decisions about having manufacturing base (development timescales counted in decades). Concerning Taiwan: Who knows what the future of naval combat looks like? Everyone thinks so when they enter a conflict. Afterwards, someone has always been surprised. (Nobody plans to start a long protracted shooting war. Usually everyone plans for a decisive victory.) No matter the specifics, or if the US sits out, it is not a good look for the US power projection capability if it so happens that during the first months of mid-to-large-sized regional war in Asia everyone, including China, both shoots up and shoots down more equipment than the US produces in one year. Perhaps again, the US will be fine after the first such war. But when there has been a couple of such wars, and China has learnt how to improvise and develop and learn?
Third, to make nuclear red lines believable you need to draw conventional lines much earlier. To draw a conventional lines, you need conventional forces and the support organization for them. If you have fewer conventional forces, then the lines you draw need to be proportional to forces you have. Suppose given points one and two, Washington decides to forgo both the superpower hegemony and large conventional forces to keep it. Do you still wish to keep Monroe doctrine? Perhaps, Mexico and Canada?
When Argentina tried to take Falklands, everyone knew the UK wouldn't waste nukes to keep the islands, and they didn't. Suppose they never responded conventionally, either ("Royal Navy was too costly, PM Hacker kept only the Trident"). Couple of decades later, someone is prone to have a bright idea to take yet another inconsequential far-off nominally British island territory ("let's conquer Bermuda for tax reasons, they won't nuke us for that like they didn't nuke Argentina"). The other islands would seek another overlord if they can help it. Perhaps the UK probably would still defend the Isle of Man or the Hebrides, because it is closer to home, but who will be sure? And if their general readiness to fight appears to be nil, and nobody thinks they would start shooting back, how much their threat of nuclear Armageddon is? Nuclear strike doctrines were developed during are when the Cold war belligerents had a large standing armies ready to shoot, and nuclear strike was yet another escalation beyond that. But if you won't fight conventionally? Psychological threat of nuclear annihilation looks more credible after you occasionally demonstrate willingness and capability to go to war in the first place.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
In great power politics, the wars are sufficiently rare that anomalies also count. (The French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were anomalous in their scale. WW1 was, again, anomalous.)
Predicting the outcomes of wars is unpredictable business. Before the 1st Gulf War, very few people knew for certain it was going to be a quick, decisive victory against inferior conventional force. If American strategy calls for small wars in the Middle East or quick decisive naval wars in Asia, what Washington is going to do when faced with an adversary who is perfectly aware of the American strategy and thus presents something that is neither?
And anyway, the current nuclear stockpiles are a fraction of what it was in the 1980s. During the Cold War, the end-of-the-world thought stopping does-not-compute aspect was heavily colored by fiction and propaganda. After the nuclear exchange, a world will end, but the world will not.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Not the bespoke weapons, no. But evidently a modern civilian drone factory can make drones that are effective for military use. I believe a protracted total war, the side with more "Gigafactories" and difficult-to-predict quality of innovativeness and engineering that comes from running the factory will be better equipped to churn out useful equipment. In a massive war, you need massive amount of weapons, and wih current production numbers, it looks possible the West would run out of the bespoke weapons.
If the decisionmakers Alice and Bob realize it, it will affect their calculations of outcomes of protracted total war, such calculations will affect their diplomatic strategies. If either side don't realize it, they will walk into it blindly into the next protracted total war, and it will affect the outcome.
Conscription, like all laws restricting individual liberty, can be societal equivalent of Ulysses tying himself to mast.
Very few people really want to go fight in a war. Yet the consensus may be that all men are needed to fight or the war is lost and the war ought not to be lost.
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