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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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I mean, the Chinese government is pretty goddamn ruthless

What I've always suspected very strongly, but wasn't sure about until the happening on 24th February, is that people tend to be very mistaken about «ruthless» states. It's not ruthlessness a la evil AI picking the most instrumentally useful move in its strategic agenda to dominate the light cone, it's the ruthlessness of an unemployed wife-beater who sometimes shows her an inkling of kindness to keep mooching off. This geopolitical gobbledygook is cope, generated on auto by the pro-regime intelligentsia for the masses with superficial interest in politics; the elites of those regimes don't even notice it for the most part, and are exclusively invested in inner «stability» and individual survival, to the point of undermining the whole system's survival odds, to say nothing of its Grand Civilizational Future. If Putin couldn't be assed to make the army procure some drones or inflatable plyboard fake tanks… scratch that clever-ass stuff, even tyres or med kits – why would Xi invest in creepy, speculative projects like cloning? Does he even believe in genetics in the first place? Why would anyone below him risk checking if he does?

So it goes.