Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
13d ago
Something I've always wondered about academic inquiry into immigration is how much of 'immigrants make economies more successful' could equally be influenced by 'ambitious immigrants will attempt to join successful societies'
Not necessarily already-successful societies, but rather societies where there is opportunity. 19th c. America and Argentina were places where there was a lot of land for the taking, and where the economy was growing. They weren't already successful by the standards of major European countries.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
They also let the bowmen get set up and deploy their stakes, didn't bother to think ahead about the effect the churned-up muddy field would have on successive charges, were dumb enough to run down their own missile troops out of impatience and malice, and didn't bother to vary their axis of advance substantively. Just an absolute disaster from the jump.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
Teddy was wise in this. GK Chesterton wrote similarly...
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
Kinda like the Longbow hard-countering the armored knight.
It really didn't. It meant "charging straight at the enemy's prepared across a muddy field and relying on your glittering form to terrify them into running away" was even MORE stupid than it might otherwise have been, but that kind of thing also failed against armies without longbows.
It just meant that the knights had to get a bit more sophisticated with their tactics. Speed and aggression, as at the battle of Patay, or use of pinning and flanking maneuvers, such as at Formigny, saw thousands of English longbowmen cut down by French chivalry.
Now some illiterate peasant with overdeveloped back muscles can one-shot you after a couple days instruction.
Other people have covered how the longbow takes a lifetime to master - and English Longbowmen were capable melee fighters themselves, with coats of brigandine and rondel daggers specifically designed to get at the weak joints of plate armor.
But also, the Longbow did not "one-shot" a man in armor. The advantage of the longbow came from (1) its ability to loose arrows in a ballistic arc instead of just the flat trajectory of crossbow bolts, (2) the incredible rate of fire that seasoned longbowmen could muster for brief periods of time, and (3) the longbow's effective range.
Individual longbow arrows were nuisances to a man in full-plate. But shoot 150 arrows at him and one will likely find a joint or seam, or just ring his bell hard enough that he'll fall down (and in plate, a man on the ground is essentially dead, either to a swarming enemy or to getting trampled by his own side). Also, those arrows were murder on enemy horses.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
But at least many conflicts of that era got settled with a basic handful of battles and the occasional siege.
The horror of medieval sieges is not to be underestimated. Plenty of death to be had there as well, between starvation, disease, rudimentary artillery, disease, undermining attempts, starvation, wall-defenses (pouring boiling oil down on attackers, etc.), disease, and, of course, night-time sallies/raids.
Also, look up the word "chevauchee" sometime if you want to have your stomach turned.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
This paper shows that having big time diversity - you know, mixing all those crazy Poles, Irish, French, Germans, English, Welsh, Czech, Slovak, Greek, hell even a few Italians and Spanish in there - was a massive reason the USA was such a technologically innovative place!
The HBDers are going to love this one.
I see and grant your point. However, what I think this actually shows is a remarkable social technology for taking small cultural differences which, in many other contexts would actively hinder cooperation and productivity, and sanding down the sharp edges enough to allow the positive aspects of cream-skimming and viewpoint diversity to take hold.
Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Bosniaks are extremely closely related from an HBD perspective. But you can't just shove them all together in a lab in Belgrade and expect them to get along - interethnic/intercommunal rivalries would instantly doom that. You can tell the same story with closely-related-but-highly-rivalrous subgroups in many other regions of the world as well.
The fact that the U.S was able to suppress those intercommunal rivalries and, yes, assimilate and to a certain extent dissolve those communities into a broader "Americanness" (or, to put the racial spin on it that both the far left and far right like these days - "whiteness"), is a wonderful thing that I think does deserve celebration despite all the buzzwords and cant that surround it these days.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but Spain proper always had a low population density, at least through the spanish golden age.
Spanish armies weren't huge, but spanish tactics, on the other hand, were top notch, as was their equipment.
Spanish military exploits were more like a random third-world dictatorship striking oil and suddenly buying top of the line military kit for long running wars in their near abroad than anything else. The Spanish army wasn't even mostly actual Spaniards.
The Spanish armies were forged in the reconquista, not conjured ex nihilo out of Peruvian silver.
they could easily have been a normal conquering empire, just give us tribute type thing.
This is how the empire originally worked in many cases, with native polities giving tribute to spanish conquistadors. However, the Crown back in Spain didn't want rogue adventurers setting up their own kingdoms, and so set up administrations to take more direct control, including settlement of more europeans. Because the church had been partly nationalized during the reconquista, this included a lot of church officials getting secular power and control as well.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
The inquisition was a monarchist attempt at gentling, centralizing, and regulating the series of irregular popular riots and local parish manias which had previously characterized concerns about false conversions and other anti-jewish sentiments. Ironically, the papal attitude was that even these efforts were far too harsh, and that the spaniards were just targeting people in order to seize their wealth rather than out of any actual proof of heresy/insincerity.
The Inquisition coincided with the Spanish Golden Age, the height of the Spanish Empire, the height of Spanish music and art, and the expansion of Spain into the New World where now hundreds of millions are Spanish-descended Catholics.
Well, yes, that's what happens when you've just finished a century-long process of reconquest of some of the richest lands in Europe, and then just-so-happen to have oodles of now-unoccupied fighting men laying around right when an explorer bumps into a whole new civilization sitting on some of the biggest silver mines in the world, and who has no resistance to any of the diseases that you're accustomed to. The inquisition had nothing to do with any of that.
Would there have been a flourishing of Catholic Spain if a larger percent of the rich were Sephardic Jews?
Yes, because increasing the percentage of wealthy spaniards which were jewish wouldn't have changed anything about the quality of Toledo steel, the tactics of the proto-Tercios, or the susceptibility of Aztecs, Maya, and Incas to old world diseases. Nor would jews have done anything to decrease the quality or output of the mines at Potosi.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
Yes, but to return to the premise of the original post, I don't think many of them are all that welcome back in the modern Democratic party, let alone "major forces" in Democratic politics.
Just look at what's happened to public figures who've made that kind of transition - Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibbi, Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore, even RFK himself - none of them are welcome in left spaces anymore.
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
Social Media is free; NYT is trying to get people to pay money to subscribe, and precisely by picking ideology - i.e., reinforcing their reader's pre-existing biases and telling them that they are correct about the world but moreso, and in fact have they considered being even MORE worried about their particular boogeymen?!? - has racked up millions of subscribers.
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
"whatever it takes" notably didn't involve breaking the story that the President was mentally incompetent, and before that it didn't involve breaking the story that the president's son was selling access to his father to foreign interests.
Correct, because those stories would have pissed off their current readers, without necessarily gaining them eyeballs among other, new customers.
Nowadays media makes money by feeding people's epistemic bubbles, not puncturing them.
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
The republican establishment needs the threat of the base going against them in order to keep the establishment delivering.
Traditionally this is done in primaries, not in general elections.
How many "squad" members have you seen supporting Trump because Kamala/Joe Biden was an unacceptable neoliberal shill collaborating with fascists yadda yadda...? I expect the answer will be "none."
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
I take the opposite analysis of a lot of this board, I think most of Israel’s flagging support is the result of the American cousins and not Israel itself. Were it not for them, Israel would just be one of many, many foreign countries with a somewhat questionable human rights record.
Very clever argument, and for a certain species of American conservative, I think it's true. However this doesn't explain European anti-Zionism, which historically has been much more pervasive both on the left and the right than in America (at least until recently).
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
Finance has busily furthered DEI, deindustrialization of the West, financialization of the economy, toxic housing bubbles and rapid development of China.
Peanut butter enthusiasts lobby for more people to eat peanut butter! Man with hammer thinks most problems can be solved by smacking them! News at Eleven!
...More seriously, I think I generally share your feelings about the finance industry. But this was funny.
The media whips up racial hysteria, worsens relations between the sexes and spreads grossly misleading racial narratives about policing.
True, but media has also been undergoing a major structural disruption due to the internet for the past twenty years; they're desperately trying to do whatever it takes to keep eyeballs. What's getting pushed out (e.g. in the NYT) is what sells - entities that don't keep up, like Newsweek, Time, many mid-major and local papers, etc. - die.
Also also, the idea that newsmedia are amoral gossipmongers lying and ginning up hysteria to goose sales isn't exactly new
I would much rather have my financial sector run by some honest, hardworking midwit who tries to advance national interests and develop our industries, than a 160 IQ financial genius who uses his vast talents for private profit, asset-stripping, offshoring and demanding share buybacks over investment.
I would rather have patriotic journalists with tedious prose and limited abilities than charismatic, excellent writers who hate me and attack me and my ancestors, systematically pursuing my disempowerment in society.
Perhaps there is a third option between "people foresaw and intended these results because they are evil" and "people would achieve alternate results because they are good", which is "people intended well, but were wrong."
I'm not going full mistake theory - people tie their egos to their opinions, rationalize and dig in, and usually aren't amenable to being convinced by dispassionate arguments. But that doesn't get rid of the fact that people tend not to think like cartoon supervillains.
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
Two months ago, Richard Hanania predicted that Nick Fuentes and the groypers would become a major force in mainstream Republican politics.
I have few instincts or thoughts on the broader question of how "prominent" Fuentes is with various political factions. However it's kinda crazy to me that someone who openly supported Kamala Harris is still being considered a Republican or conservative.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
Even given the collapse in journalism, wouldn't you expect someone pushing that thesis to collect the most persuasive cases, not the most ambiguous?
No. I would expect someone pushing the thesis to collect the most lurid and sensational cases whose details can be plausibly characterized or molded to support their view. There's no screen for ambiguity when the writer is strategically minimizing or ignoring countervailing details.
Supah_Schmendrick
25d ago
Admittedly those certainly didn't help; the Bush administration was fairly disastrous.
Supah_Schmendrick
25d ago
There are very serious violent crimes that ruin lives that don’t get that amount of time. There are some murders that don’t get that amount of time.
That's a problem with the level of punishment given to the murders.
Supah_Schmendrick
25d ago
The same could have been said for the Algerians who then took their land back.
The Pieds-Noirs had a country to go back to. Israelis don't. Maybe some would flee to the US, but I don't think the Algerian strategy is going to work; it certainly hasn't worked yet. If anything, the Palestinians are losing ground.
Supah_Schmendrick
26d ago
The Democrats will return to power eventually, this will be remembered, and yes, it will be tit-for-tat and we spiral into ever-worse decay.
Honest question - what do you believe the Democrats will do as a consequence of particular Trump actions that they would not do otherwise? In short, what concrete effect on Democratic legislative or activist actions or priorities do you think a less-crass Trump administration would have?
Supah_Schmendrick
26d ago
Frankly, I keep thinking I can't be surprised anymore by the depths which Trump (or more realistically, his social media team0 will stoop too, and yet here we are...
"Men of Virginia! Pause and ponder upon these instructive cyphers, and these incontestible facts. Ye will then judge for yourself as to policy. Ye will judge without regard to the prattle of a president; the prattle of that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, deceit and weakness; without regard to that hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. ... Take your choice between Adams - war and beggary - and Jefferson - peace and competency!"
- James Callender, "The Prospect Before Us" (1800), referring to the presidential election of that year.
"[Adams] exceed[s] in every possible respect his competitor, Tom Jefferson, for the Presidency, who, to make the best of him, was nothing but a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow; son of a half-breed Indian squaw and sired by a Virginia mulatto, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake, bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricaseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he acquired a taste during his residence among the French in Paris, to whom there could be no question he would sell his entire country at the first offer of cash made to him."
- An anonymous federalist orator, responding.
Supah_Schmendrick
30d ago
Of course, when you put it like that, it's basically symmetrical with the way academia and significant chunks of lefty popular culture have treated the Soviets and other murderous communist regimes for decades. So all in all, not super outside the overton window, right?
Supah_Schmendrick
30d ago
It was used fairly frequently here a few years ago, before falling out of favor.
Supah_Schmendrick
30d ago
The problem is that people are social animals; you can't separate the individual from the group. At best, you can try to prune and restrict membership such that solidarity and assabiyah inside the group is so strong as to allow for greater space for individualism within its bounds. But, paradoxically, you can't do that by strengthening individual liberties; you have to do so by attending to the group.
This is Cory Booker erasure!
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