muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
No bio...
User ID: 1018
Reading Eco is good mental exercise. He is quite smart, capable and well-read, not without fault, but still well-read and smart. I think The Prague Cemetery could be something that wold interest many Motte users just for peeking at the sheer amount Eco has read about the 19th century politics to write it. (Never mind the plot.)
Concerning Eco's definition of fascism. If you read the original, it appears that Eco gets that because something fits his definition is not eternally always equal to Mussolini's fascism. Truncated quotes (apologies, but Eco does not write succinctly)
If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.
Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?
Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime. Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing—far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be. ...
Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? ... [W]hen the King fired Mussolini in 1943, the party reappeared two months later, with German support, under the standard of a “social” republic, recycling its old revolutionary script, now enriched with almost Jacobin overtones. ...
So we come to my second point. There was only one Nazism. We cannot label Franco’s hyper-Catholic Falangism as Nazism, since Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian. But the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change. The notion of fascism is not unlike Wittgenstein’s notion of a game. A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein put it. ...
But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
... (insert the list with explanations) ...
We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.
More briefly, I don't think Eco would have had any problem acknowledging that his list does not overdetermine "fascism". He says he is trying to gesture at a syncretic fuzzy ball of ideas but want to argues the fuzzy ball "ur-Fascism" can meaningfully still be called "fascism" in post-Mussolini era. He quite clearly gestures that many of his points are generally unpleasant types of political thought that the free world would be better without and people wearing black shirts do not have a monopoly over them. And what would be "the most innocent of disguises" if not a political ideologue who argues to be antifascist yet deploys the same tactics and ideas?
The uncharitability is more on the people who take a distilled list of his in Wikipedia and choose to apply it like Der Hexenhammer to identify witches they want to identify as witches.
edit. this was intended as a reply to @FistfullOfCrows here edit2 @ not /u/
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
I thought it was just Breq not caring about learning other pronouns or gender concepts than Radch female pronouns. Which was character building: Breq is fully-immersed chauvinist partisan for Radch totalitarianism.
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
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
1yr ago
It just sounds like a conspiracy that happen to the other people.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
The irony is that both hardcore SJ crowd and anti-SJs miss any such implications.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
they're the same people that middle class families in 1900 employed to change diapers
I am uncertain. I have not survey data to back me up, so maybe I am fooled by fictionalized portrayals, but I'd imagine a 19th century nanny (/ domestic servant doing nanny-adjacent tasks) coming from a lower-class background could still be a conscientious, quite functional person: live very "clean", possibly both she and employer finding it acceptable for her to live in a room room in employer's home, likelier than not to go church every Sunday morning and act with moral fiber of believing the sermon in her everyday tasks. In contrast, I have hard time imagining I could find a working class let alone genuine underclass person who is both still poor enough to accept the limited salary a person who is not a quite comfortable indeed can pay and yet trustworthy enough of a person to let them in my home. On the other hand, in context of the late 19th century, it is much easier to imagine to able to find that sort of person from "lower classes", considering how during the time frame in question, domestic service was still one of largest forms of employment, especially for women, considering the whole national population. Today a capable, conscientious woman has many other equally or better paying and certainly more respected jobs to consider.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
That is an interesting idea. However, agreed, it is not going to be limited to "NPC"s. "Spook contractors" controlling discourse sounds ... not far-fatched, but a bit abstract and conspiratorial.
I suggest putting in some skin in the game. Is it feasible to get a LLM to produce a Motte post (or a full persona) that is obviously not spam, doesn't violate any of themotte.org rules, and is actually so good it get voted in as a quality contribution?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
My take concerning the ethical issues is very similar to yours.
I have gained a greater appreciation of just how difficult it is to write a sane law banning abortion. ... However, laws should be written to give the maximum benefit of doubt to the doctor and mother. There should be a medical emergency exception. To prosecute an abortion as not being medically necessary the state should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the doctor was, not just wrong, but actively acting in bad faith.
I have come to conclusion that the difficulties are not about the law as written, but the societal and cultural stuff it is supposed to reflect. Namely, there is nothing to reflect. You can not write a law and have it obeyed if it doesn't "fit" the society.
(Draconian authoritarian enforcement may help, but that option comes with a risk that the draconian authoritarian enforcers will take bribes to look the other way because they don't agree with law either. Part of the risk in a police state is that it won't be the ideal Spartan "tough but just" police state but the draconian police state where widespread corruption and disrespect of the law is a norm, which is worse.)
If people have a commonly shared moral framework broadly accepted by mostly everyone, you can write a law "abortion is generally banned except in medical emergencies" and have outcomes you expect. Without the such shared moral framework, you either get "no medical emergency is serious enough, women suffer / die of complications" or "having an unwanted baby would cause some unwanted mental distress, which qualifies as a medical reason".
Thus, my opinion is that any serious [1] legal solution is downstream of values. Why people no longer want kids? Why they are viewed as a burden? If we'd solve that, and there is a possibility for long-term effective change.
[1] There is a possibility there are legal changes that could go together with a successful values reappraisal, or some marginal tweak will improve individual outcomes. But in big picture, it won't move the overall statistic / sentiment.
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
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.
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
1mo ago
Consider also the vast majority of theoretical papers that have been published but you didn't read. Why people read seminal papers and vast majority of other published papers lie forgotten? Usually the papers that become seminal have special something that makes them useful and applicable in practice, and that applicability is discovered by testing against the reality. In experimental sciences, the testing against reality comes from running and reporting formal experiments. Sometimes in the form of explaining past observations and experiments. In engineering, people might not bother reporting experiments, but they integrate the useful results and principles in their products (which usually must be functional in the physical reality). In pure theory land, the mathematical proofs take the place of experiment (very difficult to come up with, often difficult to verify).
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
I will use exactly the same justification progressives use in favor of censorship and against freedom of speech: information should be open and accessible to all, but only experts should be allowed to comment and be given a platform, lest we suffer from a misinformation contagion propagated by the undereducated.
The issue is that internet made the line between private communication and public communication even murkier than before.
I imagine the process is like this. Step 0. Information is open and accessible, but only vetted experts are allowed to opine on public platforms. Step 1. Me and my friends want to chat about the expert-verified opinions. We set up a private Discord server / Facebook group / Telegram-thing / what young people use today. Step 2. If we are very good (discussion is information-dense, or entertaining, or got some popular people involved), at some point the extrovert friend shares the invite link to his/her friends. Suddenly our group has hundreds of lurkers. Is it still a private discussion group? Step 3. Rinse and repeat. When you hit thousands of members, congratulations, it is a major newsletter.
(Steps 2-3 were accelerated in the old Web of blogs and forums.)
Initially it doesn't feel like you are setting up a major media platform. Most of them never become big. Is there a point where it makes sense to ban them?
1.) Yes, one suit. Plus two non-suit, more sport-ish jackets. None of them fit very well since I have progressively lost weight after every time I bought the item, but one of the jackets is not outright ridiculous. But I have several trousers / jeans / shirts / sweaters / shoes that make possible all many combinations from casual to smart casual and business casual; they do fit okay and the best ones very well. I pay attention that the quality of material; generally, good quality natural fabrics look better than any synthetics.
2.) Not quite. Suit has not been worn for several years; I am too lazy to sell it. The one jacket that is not bad gets out approximately twice a year for important but non-formal family events (birthdays, Christmas). I get invited and accept invite to weddings or otherwise formal events once per decade (that is why the suit is out-of-date). At work, most people below the senior level are very casual, so usually the casual must come before the smart in "smart casual". In most situations I find myself, the well-fitting shirt or sweater and pants alone puts me in the upper quintile.
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.
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