Goodguy
9hr ago
Altamont didn't have a tremendously large number of deaths for such a large event, but it was violent in a way that Woodstock, from what I've read at least (I like the music of the time period but am not an expert on these festivals), was not.
It was alleged, though disputed, that some bands and/or managers arranged for the Hells Angels to provide security for the performers. It true, it was a very bad idea. The Hells Angels were unpredictable and violent, which should have been known at the time. Hunter Thompson's book about them, which described them as being close to dangerous wild animals despite the author's heavy counterculture sympathies, had already been out for 2 years at that point.
There were multiple reports of Hells Angels getting into violent melees with the crowd even before the murder of Meredith Hunter. A Hells Angel even punched a musician, Marty Balin.
In another incident, Mick Jagger, singer for the Rolling Stones, was punched by an unknown assailant when he arrived at the venue.
To add to the narrative, Rolling Stone magazine, which back then was actually influential among the youth, wrote a story soon after the festival that described it as a disaster.
It's also possible that the fact that the race of Meredith Hunter played a role, given the racial tensions of the time period and the fact that the youth counterculture was generally looked to with hope that it would help to resolve these tensions.
I think that the actual violence of the event combined with the journalistic coverage and the desire for simplistic, broad-brush-stroke narratives ("end of an era!", "counterculture dream turns dark!") to give the event its narrative resonance.
I'm not sure that three people dying is unusual for a supposed attendance of 400,000 people over the course of three days.
The annual death rate for 25-29 year olds in the United States in 2023 was 1.24 per 1000. Source.
((1.24 expected deaths / 1000 people) / 365 days) * 400000 people * 3 days = 4.07671232877 expected deaths.
The actual attendance might have been smaller than 400,000, the average age different, etc. And the math might be simplistic. But this gives an idea of the math, at least.
As for the vaunted stature in the American imagination...
I'm a big fan of the music of that time period and I find that other people who are interested in that time period usually don't put much emphasis on Woodstock. It was just one of many famous music events from back then. Woodstock is more commonly made central by narratives that try to capture the 1960s in a really quick synopsis. It has become an easy stand-in for the 1960s, so if you want to refer to that time period you can just show a couple seconds of Woodstock footage, same as how if you want to really quickly refer to the early 1940s you can just show a couple of seconds of footage of Hitler giving a speech.
I think many of us have seen such history synopses on television. It goes something like this: couple of seconds of Elvis dancing, then JFK assassination footage, then the Beatles landing in the US clip, then a couple of seconds of Woodstock, then some footage of Nixon, then the Sex Pistols doing "Anarchy in the U.K.".
Some of the music performed at Woodstock is really good but I think that most of the musicians who performed at Woodstock played better on other occasions. I think that Hendrix's Woodstock performance is overall not very good. From that show, I like Woodstock Improvisation more than Star Spangled Banner, although it is sloppy.
I think Hendrix was best in the studio. I like his studio Star Spangled Banner much more than the Woodstock one. 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) is fantastic.
But the US continued waging the war for 5 years after the Tet Offensive. It still had plenty of time to win the war, and/or to make the South Vietnamese military capable of defending South Vietnam, and it failed. The US did draw down its troop strength after the Tet Offensive, which likely played a role in its failure to win the war. But even 2 years after the offensive, the US troop strength was higher than it had been in 1965.
I do think the Tet Offensive and media coverage played a large role, just not a decisive one.
If the US had used an entirely volunteer military instead of using conscription, the war would still have been very unpopular in leftist circles, but the appeal of the anti-war side would have stayed relatively limited compared to the historical timeline. After all, this was the same country that went on to elect Nixon with 60% of the electoral vote in 1972 over the anti-war McGovern, despite the conscription and the failures to win the war. The hardcore anti-Vietnam-War leftists were a small subset of the US population who loom larger than their actual size because they made a large fraction of their generation's enduring movies, music, and writing — and also because the US defeat adds to the tendency to see them as having been right. It was the draft that gave the antiwawr cause resonant widespread appeal among the youth.
If the US had invaded North Vietnam, and China and the Soviet Union did not send land troops to stop the invasion in response, the US would have suffered heavy casualties but would have almost certainly won the war decisively as a result. The fear of China and the Soviet Union sending land troops into Vietnam, and/or the Soviet Union attacking Western Europe, and/or either using nukes, was the main thing that stopped the US from invading North Vietnam.
Goodguy
2d ago
I don't think the media was the main factor that made the US lose in Vietnam. The main factors were:
- Fear of Soviet and Chinese intervention prevented the US from invading North Vietnam.
- Conscription made the war more than just an abstract political event for the American population. There had been conscription during the Korean War, too, but that war ended quickly enough for conscription to not become a major political problem.
Goodguy
2d ago
Failing in Vietnam and Afghanistan did not end the so-called empire, why would failing to overthrow Iran's government end the empire?
The United States exists in the first place because a bunch of people committed treason. Treason is not automatically bad. It's kind of incoherent for an American to criticize treason. What even is treason? It's a very "in the eye of the beholder" thing, isn't it? Is the US government currently encouraging Iranian civilians to commit treason against their government?
If we follow your logic, the US government will be able to start any war it wants to at any time and, if stopping it half-way might cause chaos, we'll have to support it. We will have to suspend attempts to attack the ruling administration, since that might interfere with the war. Basically, we would turn the US into a country that is regularly ruled by military dictators. Maybe we'd even bring back the Espionage Act and make it illegal to criticize the war effort. I don't like that idea.
You might be overestimating how much of that stuff is bots.
I'm someone who was sympathetic to Israel after the 10/7 attacks and defended it against the accusations that it was committing genocide. As I still will, since I believe that those accusations are false.
At this point, though, I'm tired of your country. Tired of its shady connections to many of our highest politicians here in the US. Tired of constantly hearing about it despite its small size. Tired of the sense of self-importance that members of the strongly Zionist subset of Jews tend to have, their belief that they are the main characters of history. Not only tired, but disgusted by having my tax money go to support your country's geopolitical schemes.
Polls show that support for Israel among Americans has actually been dropping. See this for example.
And as the size of the subset of the population in the West that dislikes Israel grows, naturally so also grows the size of that smaller subset of the population which dislikes Israel enough to cheer for Israeli civilian deaths.
Goodguy
3d ago
Sure, but China could help Russia much more than it currently is helping, without breaking its own bank in the process. For example, China could spin up a few military drone factories.
The idea that Trump pushed back a Taiwan invasion only makes sense if there was, indeed, a plan for a Taiwan invasion. And I'm not sure of that, given the anemic support that China has been giving to Russia for the last 4 years. If China cares enough about its trade with the West to avoid providing significant support to a country that is actively engaged in a proxy war with the West, despite easily being able to provide such support, it seems weird to me that China would enter a possible open war with the West by attacking Taiwan.
I feel like in the last few years there has been a whole genre of "war between the US and China is inevitable" literature that has perhaps made it almost seem like such a war really is inevitable.
I'm not surprised by the popularity of the genre. It is entertaining, it has a certain "back in a Cold War" charm, it benefits China hawks and defense manufacturers.
But I believe that if such a war does happen it will represent not the outcome of inevitability, but rather a massive failure of diplomacy.
That said, I don't have a good track record of geopolitical predictions.
Goodguy
4d ago
What do you mean by the expense profile? Some quick Googling, maybe inaccurate, shows these annual operating expenses for 2025:
Caterpillar - about $56 billion
Salesforce - about $31 billion
OpenAI - about $28 billion
Are referring to OpenAI's plans for massively increased expenditures in the future?
Goodguy
6d ago
No billionaire has ever called me a nigger, but they have no idea that I exist. If I was powerful enough to be on their radar, there's a good chance that at least one of them would call me a nigger. Or whatever the modern, PC version of it is.
Goodguy
6d ago
What it means is that if you are convinced that Iran controls Hezbollah, you should probably also be convinced that Pakistan controls Lashkar-e-Taiba. Lashkar-e-Taiba is believed to have directly attacked India before. However, Pakistan has never used nuclear weapons against India.
So far in history no country has ever used a nuclear weapon against another since WW2, no matter what kind of conventional warfare it was engaged in otherwise. A country has never even used a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear-armed state, much less a nuclear-armed one that would retaliate by destroying every major city in the attacking country.
Goodguy
6d ago
Technically, the idea that Iran controls Hezbollah is speculation just like the idea that Pakistan controls Lashkar-e-Taiba is speculation. In practice, it's pretty clear that Iran at the very least has substantial influence over Hezbollah, more than any other country does.
Goodguy
6d ago
I think that India and Pakistan probably support paramilitary groups aligned against the other (although they deny it), and India and Pakistan even recently had a short conventional war, yet nukes did not fly. That even though Pakistan is a pretty Islamic country.
Goodguy
7d ago
The Americas weren't primarily discovered and colonized by Europeans who were trying to improve the well-being of their descendants hundreds of years in the future. They were primarily discovered and colonized by Europeans who wanted to improve their own lives immediately, or if not immediately then as quickly as possible. It was lust for immediate enrichment and/or freedom that mainly drove colonization, not self-sacrifice for future generations.
Goodguy
7d ago
Blacks are the most "being an NBA player"-engaged ethnic group in America, yet the vast majority of blacks are not NBA players.
Goodguy
7d ago
The tendency of some Iranians to hate America did not just appear out of nowhere in the 1970s. There was US support for the Shah. When it comes to overall tensions between Iran and the West, we could go further back to the 1941 Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.
Goodguy
7d ago
To be fair, one could argue that everything about our lives is RNG dice rolling. Even for the things that we successfully work to improve about our lives, it's RNG dice rolling that gave us the necessary health, tenacity, intelligence, and lucky happenstance of birth location to actually make the improvent possible.
With some of our closest friends, it's often possible that if on certain days we had stayed home for some random reason (maybe a head cold) instead of going to a particular location, we might never have had the conversation that initiated our friendships. Same with many other things.
But this point of view, while it may possibly be true, is not a very fun or helpful one to hold, it seems. The sense of agency feels good and is motivating.
Goodguy
7d ago
You don't have to buy drinks for women to socialize with them at bars. It's also possible to find chill bars where you can have a conversation at a normal volume. Unfortunately, alcohol is terrible for health.
Goodguy
7d ago
I often get the sense that the red pillers (meaning people who are really into that community, not just anyone who agrees with some of the ideas) don't actually want to have sex with women, they just want the ego boost / validation of having sex with women. They don't seem to be driven by either lust or romance. Instead, they seem to be driven by fear, ego, desire for status, and so on.
Goodguy
7d ago
How do you reconcile that idea with the fact that, even in our post-sexual-revolution age in which women are sexually free and can have jobs, fewer than 10% of adult American men are virgins and only about 30% are single?
Goodguy
7d ago
I partly agree, but at least one very real reason to have a romantic partner even if one is content alone remains: it is to reduce, through both the partnership itself and through children, the chance of being alone in old age.
Goodguy
7d ago
I extensively experimented with that method and in my experience, it's been a dud. Some limited use can help at first, but the nervous system quickly adapts to the substance and becomes dependent on it, at which point the effect on socializing is more often to suppress one's vitality and make one dull than it is to create a sexual glow. And the negative effects on health are really bad.
Goodguy
7d ago
We have seen the brown people march and chant “from the river to the sea” now.
We have seen it. The average Jew is not a politics-obsessed person who watches the latest aggregated videos of demonstrations on social media and automatically distrusts mainstream framings of topics.
I think traffic accidents and fatal overdoses are pretty common causes of death at music festivals.
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