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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   29920 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Curtis Yarvin wrote about this clusterfuck: Gaza and the nomos of the earth. It makes some humorous connections between American foreign policy and dog fighting pits, and visualizes a world where America stops trying to meddle and just lets "might makes right" rule:

But this is how might makes right. Now, picture this victory—the victory of force and order over turmoil and chaos—worldwide, cleaning up all the world’s open sores. You are picturing the fall of the American empire—and realizing that, like the USSR (if much better), the GAE can actually fall upward. Almost all the problems it supposedly exists to solve will rapidly solve themselves as soon as it is gone.

Curiously, he's arguing for the US cutting Israel loose, militarily and diplomatically, but that this would lead to Israel finally sorting out the Palestinian problem, through force. I say curious, because I'm not sure if Israel is actually strong enough to stand on its own without the US supplying weapons, but if they are, well, I say Israel is illegitimate, but so be it: I don't believe in wandering into a barbaric hinterland to impose one's sense of justice or civilization, which is a big point of agreement between me and Yarvin.

Definitely felt called out hard by this line:

Are you addicted to Anglo-American missionary imperialism? Test yourself with two easy checks. Do you genuinely, emotionally, care about the plight of the Palestinians? Do you know where Stepanakert is? If your answers are “yes” and “no,” you need help.

I need help I guess, except I don't believe in militarily intervening in favor of the Palestinians.

I wonder what is the proper relation of a civilization to the barbarians. Yarvin says:

The basic way for a country to be neutral in a war is, as Hamilton observes, to trade freely with both sides, but not sell weapons (“contraband of war”) to either.

And yet, so much of the world is barbaric. Kinda makes you hope Better Angels of our Nature is true.

Can someone invent a Curtis Yarvin reading LLM so that I can finally make sense of this guy's massive wall of rambling texts full of unfinished sentences

You know, I can understand him just fine with my paltry 115 IQ (as estimated by the Wonderlic). I once wrote something that it seems @naraburns, who is much smarter than me, didn't understand (others did though), so I'm wondering if there is some writing that is meant to be apprehended by faculties other than reason.

I have written things people much smarter than me did not understand. Mostly while drunk though.

But did anyone understand those is the real question? Because there were quite a few people who understood what I wrote.

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