Tainari88 wrote:I don't think empires in human history do well in the bigger picture. You do. A deep deep rift in thought process between you and I.
They cast a very tall shadow. You don't speak Spanish, hail from Puerto Rico and call yourself Tainari if the Spanish Empire didn't exist to make that so. I don't have family in the US, Canada, Ireland, England, and Australia and speak American English without the British Empire. Empires rise and fall, but their legacies echo for centuries thereafter.
Tainari88 wrote:The way you write about imperialism is the thing. It is not the thing.
It's the thing; it's not the thing. Hmmm... Is this one of those cases where being a woman means you get to hold both sides of the argument?
Tainari88 wrote:You will continue to think your way is the only way as most nationalistic types think.
I don't think it is the only way. It think it is the best way at this time. I'm not a fan of the globalists. I'm not a fan of the lockdowns. You don't like Donald Trump, fancy him a dictator, but ignore someone like Governor Whitmer where the Michigan Supreme Court strikes down her edicts as unconstitutional and she flouts the Supreme Court. I don't think you are that troubled by dictatorship. You get upset if I express apathy towards people a long way away from me. How do you feel about Azeri's and Armenians fighting again? Close to me? Well, it hits San Francisco too. I was on the boat this weekend with two police officer friends and they began talking about the Armenian church that got burned down in the Laurel Heights neighborhood.
Tainari88 wrote:Nationalism of your type is not some great international solution.
It's a persistent reality; otherwise, ethno nationalities that flee places like Azerbaijan and Armenia to go to America don't start fighting in America against each other. You can pretend these problems don't exist, but they do.
Tainari88 wrote:Why is that so hard for you to accept?
I don't accept the idea that we can all sit down, hash out what we think is a reasonable solution, and expect everyone to abide by it. Humans are mammals, mammals are social, mammals are animals, mammals are territorial. The leftist/progressive/whiggish ideal is that progress is unidirectional and society evolves to better and better situations; yet, history is replete with stories where that does not happen. Why is it that debates with socialists always devolve into semantic arguments about the meaning of socialism, the inevitability of socialism, and the argument among socialists that socialism has never been tried (true socialism, that is)? After living enough life, one starts to question that "presentation" of systems, rhetoric, etc. It's why I can dispatch with egalitarianism when everything in my society tells me that such a notion is wrong. It's not that I think we should implement a class system. It's precisely because I think that such a system exists rather naturally, and you think it is exclusively a function of the political system.
Tainari88 wrote:Maybe it is the same thing as accepting the Democratic Party of the USA has changed philosophies over time.
People can just form a new party. A party apparatus is just a corporation. There is no need to preserve the old party trappings if you fundamentally disagree with what it used to be. The Democrats became a welfare state party, but they never became truly anti-racist. They get people to participate in their own self-destruction. Black Lives Matter is a perfect example:
How Black Lives Matter’s Antagonism To Marriage And Family Hurts Black AmericansBLM seeks to dismantle the very institution that research consistently shows is most likely to aid and empower black Americans: the natural family.
...
Black Lives Matter — the organization, not the irrefutably true statement — has taken center stage in the necessary debate on race today, overshadowing others like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Democrats are the most venal and cynical people imaginable. Other than the communist party, I can't think of many people I would consider more spiritually vacuous than America's Democrat Party.
What are all these riots about these days? Police brutality? Where? Cities. Run by whom? Democrats. It's not Republicans that run these places. It's Democrats. It's almost exclusively Democrats, and for two generations in most cases. In some cases, like Atlanta, you have to go back to Reconstruction 141 years ago to find the last Republican mayor of Atlanta. In NYC, you can go back to Giuliani, because New York was frankly a dangerous place before Giuliani; and, it's becoming dangerous again. There was a two term Republican mayor of LA after the riots following the Rodney King beating. Who was mayor then? Tom Bradley--black and Democrat. It's undeniable.
What makes Trump great is that he calls it out--of course, after people like me point it out year after year. However, what I'm saying is true. You can't really dispute it, so you keep side stepping it.
Tainari88 wrote:For you it is just some men and imperialistic assholes who make history in the world.
Maybe read "Algorithms to Live By"? Exploration/Exploitation is an individual human algorithm, with exploration being much more common among the young and exploitation much more common among the mature. However, I do not expect you to comprehend it, because I don't think you can grasp a term like "exploitation" in anything but a Marxian sense. Think of an empire as organizational behavior, and an organization as just a group of individuals. I don't think you are stupid, but you make the assumption I don't understand much, because I don't come to the same conclusion as you. I don't think the world has to go my way.
When Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden were leaking about massive collection of data, I was working on mass storage systems beginning at the petabyte scale. I was very cynical about it. Human nature isn't all it's cracked up to be. My new cell phone has more computing power than all the computers in the world in 1980, and a better camera than the best spy satellite in 1980, and a better, smaller and cheaper GPS receiver than any military GPS receiver in 1980. Yet, what do people do with these things? Do we have a cure for coronavirus yet? Cancer? No. We do have the ability to take a picture of our cats and upload them to platforms that can easily transport them around the world in the blink of an eye. We have plenty of pornography too. That's human nature. It's utterly mind blowing that you could store tens of thousands of music albums on something that fits in your pocket; yet, does that portend a generation of kids with exquisite taste in music? I don't even think I need to probe that vein of inquiry further...
Tainari88 wrote:The number zero is very instrumental in achieving space exploration. Who invented it? The Mayan civilization. The concept of the absence of value. Some ancient indians did it.
The ancient Egyptians had it in their accounting systems by 1770 BC without any known circumnavigation to Mayan settlements--although, both had a propensity for building pyramids.
Tainari88 wrote: Then you got position based math. Arabic. You start dealing with all the contributions of the entire human race that goes into some concept that is advanced and you find out it is not about some imperialistic assholes who waste money on wars and think highly of themselves BJ.
I could be wrong, but I think people who build pyramids as monuments to themselves and probably use tons of slave labor in building them might be considered "imperialistic assholes," whether they are Egyptian or Mayan.
Tainari88 wrote:It is about people who are never given any credit for their struggles in life because the ones who have the violent behavior and enormous egos want them to live in the shadows and never be acknowledged.
Oh really? Is that why computers use "Algorithms" as in Al Kwarizmi? Or that our high schools teach "Algebra," as in Hisab al Jabr W'al Muqaballah?
Tainari88 wrote:The pillaging types always erase the accomplishments of the competition because their egos are fragile and evil in general.
You mean those pillaging Arabs like Queen Zenobia of Palmyra attacking Alexandria? It sure is shit isn't the British, who went out of their way to preserve so much of antiquity--even finding the Rosetta Stone and giving us a basis for understanding hieroglyphics.
Tainari88 wrote:They run out of steam or usefulness over time and they have to be replaced.
Yes. I think the post WWII technocracy has run out of steam.
An asshole like Joe Biden says, "If you can go down 3000 ft into a coal mine, you can learn how to code." Not really. You need to have a very disciplined mind to be able to code. I've seen attempts to learn it bring grown men to tears. Yet, we have millions of people who know how to do it now. The problem with that is that anyone who can make the leap out of ideology and into empiricism knows that politicians of all stripes are frequently lying. The more I grew technically, the less I could tolerate being a Republican. George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi brought us the TSA and "airplane mode" on cellular phones. Al Gore at once helped to open up China to global trade and the biggest increase in CO2 output in human history, while at the same time complaining about the dangers of climate change. It is realizations like that which make Donald Trump appealing compared to the establishment.
Tainari88 wrote: That is why I think the word conservative is for people holding on to things that were meant to change and die off.
Usually, they are conserving useful institutions, and sometimes collective identities.
Tainari88 wrote:That is their destiny for failing to understand the nature of the world they live in.
Something tells me you aren't speaking of the Mayans, and their civilization dying off. That can only be explained by "imperialistic assholes." Right?
Tainari88 wrote:The world of filmmaking is changing for the better. More diverse and less corporate with time. It is a good thing.
I'm not so sure. There is something to be said for high culture. A kid today in a bedroom with a laptop, a microphone, a synthesizer and maybe a few other analog instruments can out produce anything the Beatles could do at the height of their powers, and far more cheaply. Yet, the popular music of today is sterile, quantized, pitch corrected and formulaic to the point of being unartistic. Yet, it's very well produced--even in a kid's bedroom.
Unfortunately, that even happens in high capital productions at scale. Take Disney's purchase of the Star Wars franchise, and how they ruined it with The Last Jedi by introjecting a bunch of "woke" political bullshit into a storyline. The music was great. The special effects marvelous. Great cinematography. Yet, they completely ruined the story. They did the same thing to Mad Max. It's a shame that something as banal as Ford versus Ferrari becomes the more interesting film.
Small independent films. Yeah. Yet, a once natural outlet for that like YouTube has become a hopelessly "woke" political outlet.
Tainari88 wrote:Who knows though what happens to a lot of creative art forms if everything is monitored by Big Brother?
It's not that it's just monitored, it is captured, bought and paid for and pressed into the service of the establishment. That's why Star Wars movies are just shit now. When George Lucas was an independent filmmaker, he struggled to get his movies made. A lot of his personal struggles were reflected in those movies, like The Empire Strikes Back. What does Star Wars represent now? Contrived globalist culture with the needs of globalist corporations woven into the mix.
Tainari88 wrote:I like diversity in art.
But not in political views...
Tainari88 wrote:I don't know about you? You liked Desafnado.
Yes. You're surprised I know about Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, etc. You would be surprised to know that I usually go to at least a few symphonies a year. Michael Tilson Thomas (retired) was a big fan of Stravinsky, Mahler, and others. I used to love watching and listening to Midori Goto play. Here's an example:
Yet, I'm just as happy at an AC/DC concert.
Call me racist all you want. I've never been a fan of hip-hop/rap. Yet, I'm a big fan of blues, jazz, ragtime, etc.
Tainari88 wrote:To replace it with what? I am unconvinced you have given the replacement society much of your time BJ.
I don't think the rudiments of capitalism are wrong, anymore than I think the rudiments of a base-10 numeral system, or the Roman alphabet need replacing. I just think the current ruling class needs replacing, as they are too authoritarian, too dishonest, too under-accomplished, too unaccountable, and generally too insufferable.
Tainari88 wrote:I think @ingliz is quite knowledgeable about him eh? He seems to like beating you up verbally with the McInnes dude. I find it quite amusing.
I find it amusing too, but for different reasons. The Proud Boys are insignificant. Antifa, by contrast, has wreaked billions in damages with the blessings of the urban Democrat political machine.
Tainari88 wrote:He is bound to be the world's most terrible statesman. Hee hee.
I really don't think he will be regarded that way. The establishment hated Reagan, but he cast a long shadow. Between Reagan and Trump, the only president we've had in that time that had a significant societal impact was Clinton, and he is sadly remembered primarily for his scandalous behavior. Trump already has significant peace treaties, and a booming stock market.
Tainari88 wrote:But you see him as a useful tool to destroy the establishment.
Opposition to Trump is too extreme, and is destroying the establishment by itself. Ted Cruz had a remarkable retort to Andrew "Fraedo" Cuomo.
Policy wise, Trump is a bog standard politician except for his positions on illegal immigration, trade, and interventionist warfare. Trump would be fine to implement a government-run health care system, but he's serving as a Republican and can't do it. Trump was fine with gay marriage mandated by the Supreme Court. Trump was fine with Gorsuch giving Title IX protections to transgenders. Practically speaking, he's not a movement conservative, but he actively represents movement conservatives because it allowed him to win the White House and he desperately needs them to win again. It is frankly remarkable that Trump became president. It's remarkable that Obama did too. Obama was a false hope for leftists, and Trump is a bit for conservatives too. However, the establishment is struggling mightily now, because it has turned on the US electorate; and the US electorate wised up and is repaying them in kind. They should be getting kicked in the proverbial crotch. You know I'm no fan of AOC's politics, but I was the first on PoFo to point out her significance.
It's remarkable that someone like John Boehner quit. It's remarkable that someone like Paul Ryan quit. It's remarkable that someone as ineffectual as Nancy Pelosi clings to power, as a new generation spits in her face. They never thought that sowing the seeds of discord would come back to bite them, but it has.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden