General Politics Thread

I'm aware, that's why I say it's incorrect. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest such determinism is correct. Our history is perfectly compatible with a non-deterministic reality, furthermore, while it's true that the modern day is better then the past in some respects the Whig view of history is highly selective.

You know. This talk about "EU as the Fouth Reich" made me think.

What if they aren't the only Axis power that is back

Think about it. Native Americans are descendients of people from the land that we know as Siberia. Siberians are Asians.

Ergo, Native Americans are Asian.

Ergo. Latino Americans are Asians.

Ergo. This means that the so-called Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership is just a fancy new name for The Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere.

Japan isn't back. They never stopped.

In some years,Peruvians, Mexicans and Chileans would be speaking Japanese. Is just question of how much.

They already have local collaborators among the youth, they are called Otakus or Weebs and while they seem harmless, they will betray their homelands to the Japanese as soon as possible!!

Beware The new Japanese Empire.

I love a good shitpost. I needed to share this. This really show how Dumb is the idea of "EU as the third Reich", right?

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 26th 2019 at 8:45:07 AM

Personally, I welcome our New Glorious Nipponese Overlords.

As someone with relatives in Taiwan and who currently is staying in Taiwan, I don't find that idea nearly as amusing as you might. Particularly in light of the LDP's push to re-militarize.

I'm perfectly fine with Imperial Japan never making a comeback.

Edited by M84 on Jun 26th 2019 at 9:57:26 PM

Now I'm wondering if someone of notoriety has said the same as I, but without irony. I'm sure yes, but dunno.

Look at this. And Then, look at this.

Does This Remind You of Anything? /s

But yeah, The idea is absurd. And that's basically the same of why EU=Fourth Reich is so dumb.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 26th 2019 at 9:06:55 AM

I can understand that, I'd also find it hard to find it funny if eg the English took over my country and half the world...

Oh, Wait!

Edited by GoldenKaos on Jun 26th 2019 at 3:39:12 PM

I find it really hard to understand how anyone could argue that the present is not objectively better than the past, provided you take a long-term perspective. What sane person would exchange places with a randomly selected individual from even 100 years ago?

The technology may have improved the average standards of living around the world, but certain groups may have found it less disadvantageous relative to their peers in other time periods. And then there's cases such as homsexuality where I'm sure a lot of gay men would take living in Ancient Greece to the threat of being outright executed for it in certain countries.

Being poor has always sucked, regardless of the time period. Being poor as shit today is IMHO still marginally better than being poor as shit in the past.

Look on the bright side, at least the English didn't flood your ancestors' homeland with opium. The British Empire was a glorified narco-state.

Edited by M84 on Jun 30th 2019 at 3:01:25 AM

No, but they did systematically extract most of the country's natural wealth and suppress the native culture to the point that parents stopped teaching their kids their first language and kids were beaten in school for using said language, because obviously being bilingual would only hold you back. But there's no point turning this into a pity olympics thread. The English have been in the business of colonialism for almost eight centuries, and it's not surprise that the current Brexit rhetoric is running on the same kind of exceptionalism.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Jun 29th 2019 at 12:30:46 PM

Suffice to say that the British Empire was kind of shit.

Who has done that?

The article I linked argued against the idea that it was universally better, not that the standard of living was the same as 1900 or whatever.

This can belong to the Alternate History thread as well, but I'm wondering. Anyone have thought about hypothetical alternate political developments?

One that I found very interesting was a weird Enlightened Despotism...that supports what we know as Socially Progressive causes. It made me think on what other possibles ideologies would have existed.

Thinking about them.makes me learn about our real developments, which is curious.

Also. I found this fun Copypasta.

Broke: Opossing the EU due to wanting to preserve the glory of your European country Woke: Opossing the EU so Western Europe can fall into irrelevance and thus European Imperialism can finally be over

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 30th 2019 at 7:12:49 AM

I'd go as far as to say that already existed, both the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks were rather progressive movements who were also illiberal if not outright totalitarian.

Contrary to what some Enlightenment stans like to pretend, it's always been compatible with authoritarianism.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 30th 2019 at 5:17:10 AM

I find a bit weird that Eutopean nationalists oppose the EU. Is a organization literally created to preserve Western Europe as a world player.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 30th 2019 at 7:20:00 AM

Well, that's not quite why it was created. The purpose was to prevent continental conflict and encourage European cooperation, the fact it would support their collective power is important to that but not the only purpose.

On the nationalists, one thing to keep in mind is that they don't see themselves as European nationalists. They're English, or Serbian, or French, or German nationalists who want their countries to be "sovereign" and free of any external control or accountability. Also, the EU is a liberal-internationalist institution and as reactionary authoritarian nationalists, they have specific ideologically related reasons to hate it.

The present is so much better than the past, for so many people, on so many dimensions, that I'm genuinely confused what you argument might be. As Pinker's book, your article's author does not attack his statistical analysis in any sort of systematic way. Yes, rates of violence in the past are hard to calculate, but Pinker does the best anyone could with the data we have available. Rates of violent death do indeed seem to have declined over the last 400 years or so. As to why, Pinker's conclusion that it was due primarily to the rise of humanitarian values is open to skepticism of course, personally I think it far more likely to be due to the increasing sophistication of the economy and associated social institutions, with humanism acting as a sustaining ideology of these changes (that is, they are a cultural institution that solidifies and promotes the economic changes), but who cares? The reasons why the world is becoming a better place to live in may be complex and difficult to isolate, but whatever the actual historical forces may be, I can think of no reason why they should stop operating now. To take just one example from the list previously offered, American anti-intellectualism has a long documented history, it waxes and wanes in response to larger economic and cultural forces, it's not something new but part of a regular pattern. Based on past behavior, I predict it will run it's course, if for no other reason that because there are too many factions in our society that benefit from a proper understanding and application of scientific principles to commerce and manufacturing. I could be wrong, of course, but my reading of American history leads me to believe that that is the most likely outcome (not a certain outcome, but merely the most likely).

Also, regarding Enlightened Despotism. I don't mean Random Leftist Dictatorships, I mean Monarchies.

If it sound completely outlandish, that's the point. Is something that don't make sense to us.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 30th 2019 at 8:44:34 AM

x 6 That broke - woke bit is great xd x 3 Pretty much this. You mean like a follow up of Enlightened Absolutism?

Edited by akanesarumara on Jun 30th 2019 at 3:58:10 PM

Exactly. I'm obviously not arguing for it (My country don't have a monarchic tradition, why care), but the idea of a Progressive Monarchy in the 21th century is interesting.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 30th 2019 at 10:45:35 AM

I am not saying that the present has not been better then in the past. I am merely opposed to the unfounded belief in Whig history, things have improved not because they must but because they can.

Climate change, the rise of the alt-right. There are issues that exist and could easily get worse.

My argument isn't hard to understand, historical determinism is nonsense.

Who was arguing in favor of it? Certainly wasnt me. There are well founded reasons to be optimistic about the future, and equally well founded reasons not to be, as always. Hope for the best, and plan for the worst, what else?

So, about the use of Force and how is vital to a nation-state as we understand them, its a pretty interesting topic IMO.

Broadly speaking, force is the basic currency on which everything ultimately trades.

That doesn’t mean you need to liberally apply whatever force you have, but even pacifists ultimately have to acknowledge its fundamental nature.

Government can be seen through the lens of being a mecanism reduce the amount of force necessary in a larger and larger society.