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NLJP
Aug 26, 2004


Armani posted:

I honestly wish we lived in this reality. Anything to keep the Old Ones sleeping for another millennia.

It'd be comforting in a way, yeah: "Well, Trump's gonna be president but his building projects have secretly been keeping the ley lines contained so the sidhe won't unleash the Wild Hunt". Can't be having competition for temporal power can we.. Also what else could explain Trump's stupid resort in Scotland

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QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Shbobdb posted:

. . . . Kinda?

It's been pretty well established that Japan was ready to surrender. Dropping the bombs halted Russian advances in China and showed the Ruskies that we've got The Bomb.

It wasn't a "false flag" per se, but the real reasons why we did it are at odds with the official reasons why we did it. Things like that happen all the time, we just don't call them "conspiracy theories" because they are an accepted part of the official historical narrative.

Your post doesn't mesh with reality

at all

I mean I know you're a gimmick poster who sometimes pretends to be an insane nutball but you could at least not post outright false information

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

Mr. Sunshine posted:

No, it hasn't. In fact, even after the bombs had been dropped, there was an attempted coup by senior Japanese officers trying to prevent the emperor from announcing the surrender.[quote]

A coup which failed spectacularly precisely because there was no support for a continued conflict. A coup lead by hardliners that failed spectacularly isn't solid evidence. The new Suzuki administration took power precisely because Japan wanted an end to the conflict. Granted, they wanted a "peace with honor"-style end to the conflict and because of how the Dolchstosslegende played out in Germany, the Allies demanded an unambiguous victory. Japan was trying to surrender and MacArthur knew they were trying to surrender. But they were trying to surrender in the wrong way, which segues nicely into the next part . . .

[quote]This is not true. The Soviet offensive in Manchuria halted because it had achieved its goals (in a stunning success), and their forces needed time to rest and refit before any new operations could be attempted. Japan surrendered before that.

Given the benefit of hindsight and having access to information that players on all sides didn't have at the time, what you say is factually correct. But it leaves out a critical detail, which is that the Suzuki administration* was trying to use Chiang Kai-shek (in retrospect, LOL) as an intermediary to surrender to the Allies via Russia. Because of Cold War politics that were already ossifying, the US wasn't going to have that. MacArthur knew they wanted to surrender using Russia as an intermediary and that was utterly unacceptable to American interests.

Two atom bombs later, Russia backed off and despite the war having been overwhelmingly won by Russian soldiers, a very polite division of conquered territories was developed along with an end of the conflict. No one wanted more war, but absent the Bomb, Russia could have totally steamrolled Europe and could have created a Russian-dominated sphere of influence in the East (which they thought was happening anyway, since they rocked in in Manchuria).

Instead the Bomb created a more "equitable" split, with American interested dominating Japan and what we now think of as "Western" Europe while Russia got Mongolia, parts of Manchuria and what we now think of as "Eastern" Europe with a dividing line down Germany (and microcosm as macrocosm, Berlin). China, former colonies (the subcontinent, Africa, the Middle East) and much of the Pacific were left a sort of ill-defined jumble in an "on accident/on purpose" bit of diplomacy since it allowed for an end of a widespread very hot war and back into more of a "Great Game" series of proxy conflicts. We should all be grateful that "power kegs" like Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Czechoslovakia, Greece, etc. didn't escalate further but a lot of that has to do with the spectre of the Bomb.

As hosed up as it is, I'm glad that we (as Americans) dropped Bombs on an end-of-conflict, surrendering party like Japan as opposed to saving them for targets like Moscow. An American lead "Operation More Powerful Than Napoleon and Hitler Combined" with atomic weapons (keep in mind, Russia did not have atomic weapons yet, just a whole lot of soldiers) is one of those historical counterfactuals I really don't want to think about. It would have been just absurdly brutal. Not "invest in leather and hair products because we're living in the post-nuclear apocalypse" brutal but more like the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict becoming the entire world. Imagine the entire Neo-liberal, post-colonial world as an active hot zone. Or like China's Warlord period as being basically the entire world.

The world we are living in now has a lot of problems. But . . . bbbbrrrhhhhh, the alternative is a whole lot loving scarier.

* The role of Shigenori Togo can't be understated here. Importantly, his career began under the Konoe administration, so he's more of a Meiji Restoration Imperialist as opposed to a Hideki Tojo "Fascism with Japanese Characteristics" hardliner (importantly, those were the hardliners that enacted the failed coup). That said, he worked under the Konoe, Tojo and Suzuki administrations, providing an important continuity. The word "polymath" gets thrown around a lot these days, so let's just say he had a gift for language and a soft, charismatic touch, which was instrumental in his role as both an ambassador to Germany during the build-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War and Russia when the whole thing became hyper-international and all the regional conflicts became World War II. Before Pearl Harbor, he was a staunch opponent of war with the US. He even tried to arrange a detente with the US (and successfully arranged one with Russia) after Operation Barbarossa. Pearl Harbor hosed that poo poo up, but that isn't his fault. He still served as a loyal, patriotic Japanese citizen under the Tojo administration, despite his personal misgivings.

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

QuarkJets posted:

Your post doesn't mesh with reality

at all

I mean I know you're a gimmick poster who sometimes pretends to be an insane nutball but you could at least not post outright false information

LOL. I may be a bit of a gimmick poster, but you are crazy in the same way that "9/11 was a false flag!" people are crazy. It's cool to be ignorant of the geopolitical zeitgeist that resulted in the use of atomic weapons, but it is really not cool to defend war crimes as being necessary.

quarkjets posted:

Your post doesn't mesh with reality

at all

The Congo Free State was indeed in the interests of civilization and the good of Belgium!"

Smoothrich
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 2 years!

blowfish posted:

laffo

Japan was ready to surrender in the sense that they wanted to keep whatever was left of their me-too colonial empire (quite a substantial bit) instead of losing all of it after covering it in dead GIs, which luckily didn't happen.

Oh god, we had like a 100 page flamewar about this in the "INDEFENSIBLE HIROSHIMA REVISIONISM" thread which actually is full of some really in depth investigation and analysis by sperging goons of the leaders at the time, cables they wrote, the morality and implications of strategic air bombing, and the random Holocaust denying anime loving conspiracy theorist saying the nukes were racist war crime lies etc. Talking about it here will quickly derail this thread into a debate when the other thread is made for just that.

The important distinction is that you can debate the motives of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japanese surrender, using empirical evidence and speculation about the facts. It is a very complicated, contentious topic as it ended WW2 and had two superpowers about to collide into Japan after the brutal Pacific campaign. A defining moment in history that had consequences in American foreign policy for decades.. much like 9/11. So to completely poo poo all over the real history by thinking some stupid nonsense like JAPAN ACTUALLY NUKED THEMSELVES TO HIDE THE TRUTH, WAKE UP SHEEPLE! is such a ridiculous sounding fantasyland story that teaches nobody nothing, it seems common sense to not say or think that.

But with 9/11 you can't even walk down the block in any city around the world, or scroll down the first page of Google or Youtube results, without this overwhelming tsunami of poo poo about 9/11 being an inside job. If people spent .0001 percent of the time having frank conversations about Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's ideology, the capabilities of our intelligence services, the incompetence or negligence by our leaders, the ongoing health problems of 9/11 first responders, the root causes and rising threat of terrorism, etc as people do about melting points, thermite, Jews, and freezeframes of UNEXPLAINED SHADOW/MAGIC ENERGY BALL IS SMOKING GUN?!? the world would probably be a safer place to live in today.

Instead we have a much much stupider and dangerous one with more people dying of terrorism worldwide than ever and ISIS taking over half of Iraq and Syria, making even another 9/11 seem almost inevitable, while people are still debating the "facts" of Loose Change even though 5 seconds of research into the filmmakers makes it clear it was a work of fiction to get gullible nerds' money. ISIS can literally film every war atrocity they do and put it on Youtube while they have tens of thousands of soldiers defeating Iraqi and Syrian armies and controlling major cities and oil fields like a Sunni nation-state, and people are STILL treating Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda/ISIS like its a Zionist Bush Jew CIA conspiracy, it is almost maddening to think about.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Shbobdb posted:

LOL. I may be a bit of a gimmick poster, but you are crazy in the same way that "9/11 was a false flag!" people are crazy. It's cool to be ignorant of the geopolitical zeitgeist that resulted in the use of atomic weapons, but it is really not cool to defend war crimes as being necessary.

I'm not defending the use of atomic weapons you moron, your claim that the Japanese were ready to just sit down and meekly surrender is simply false

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

blowfish posted:

laffo

Japan was ready to surrender in the sense that they wanted to keep whatever was left of their me-too colonial empire (quite a substantial bit) instead of losing all of it after covering it in dead GIs, which luckily didn't happen.

Yeah, they wanted to keep some of their colonial empire. That's pretty standard for powers of the day. They were willing to be flexible on what they would keep. They saw how surrender worked on the Western Front, they were willing to give up a great deal. Like a reasonable, rational actor. They weren't some yellow menace willing to fight until the bitter end with children using bamboo spears on Japanese soil. Yes, they were preparing for that because they knew the war was lost and were loving terrified.

One of the great tragedies of war is that we dehumanize the enemy. Would it have been so bad to let Japan keep Korea, a colony they had held since 1876 (1905, 1910 at the latest if we want to split semantic hairs on what constitutes a legitimate colony). If you include prior Japanese involvement, that is basically US in Hawaii. Ditto with US in the Philippines and the Caribbean.

Colonial powers gonna colonize. It is not a good thing, but it would be unreasonable to expect colonial powers to behave any differently. Especially since WWI established Japan as a legitimate colonial power. Yes, they got screwed out over during the peace process (a lot like Italy, actually) but unlike Italy, they had their colonies recognized.

The whole "self determination of nations" was always a "what is righteous for thee is not right for me" victors writing history poo poo. Japan was hoping that the Allies had learned more from the whole Elsaß-Lothringen debacle over the last 1000 years coupled with the Balkan disaster that sometimes you just gotta let colonizers colonize.

Thankfully, that isn't a modern perspective. The whole civilizing, X-man's burden is an anathema to modern thought because we learned that lesson the hard way. But it would be ahistorical to apply those modern values to WWII-era Japan. Look at Churchill. Great leader, great warrior, great orator* but racist as gently caress colonial monster. Ditto with Lincoln. Great man, freed the slaves and also horrifically racist by modern standards. Even if you think Imperial Japan was over-the-top Evil, they were on the level with America's Founding Fathers trying to spread Enlightenment values while hypocritically also engaging in slavery.

We can (and should) condemn them for the terrible things that they did while also understanding why they did them. Kinda like dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I understand the political realities of the time, so I can understand why they committed these atrocities, but that doesn't mean that committing those atrocities was morally acceptable or OK.

History is complex like that. And we as observers and students should have understanding and compassion. People don't really change that much from a fundamental perspective. If we dismiss the bad actions of history as the actions of monsters we are likely to underestimate the monsters that exist in the present.

We're talking about WWII here, so it isn't inappropriate to :godwinning: and reject the notion that tragedy could never happen here and now because we are civilized, whereas tragedy happened there and then because they were uncivilized. To me, that is just colonialism all over again.

*we're talking mature WWII Churchill here, WWI-era Churchill had an acerbic wit but was a piss-poor leader and warrior

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

QuarkJets posted:

I'm not defending the use of atomic weapons you moron, your claim that the Japanese were ready to just sit down and meekly surrender is simply false

LOL. Have any other strawmen guarding that cornfield of yours?

point of return
Aug 13, 2011

by exmarx
Have any alternate-universe writers done "What if Japan surrendered and was allowed to keep Korea?"

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
I'm sure DPRK has some pretty crazy propaganda pieces about what life would be like if the Japanese-American Imperialists had maintained control after WWII/Korean War.

It's a pity that alt-history is such a military fanboy crypto-fascist wankfest since I think there are a lot of really interesting ways things could have gone differently.

For example, NYC was seriously considering declaring itself a free city during the American Civil War. That would have seriously complicated things and could have lead to both the USA and the CSA balkanizing into a bunch of micro-states. From a US-only perspective, that is super interesting. How would the various states, city-states and now-legitimized micro-states relate to one another? Plus, worldwide, Republicanism would be pretty heavily discredited. You've got France that fell into anarchy then curb-stomped Europe under a military dictatorship and America that fell apart into a bunch of warring states. You'd still have students wearing pop-art George Washington shirts saying Republicanism could totally work if you gave it a chance, man . . . but most serious people would agree that, while imperfect, a strong executive is really the best and only way to run run society.

I can't even begin to speculate on things on the Continent (especially when it comes to Republicanism and local sovereignty -- I mean, Austro-Hungarian Federation under Franz Ferdinand? Not even on the table!) but things like the Parliament Act of 1911 and 1949 would just not be on the table. Like, on the level of a politician during the Red Scare trying to make the USA into the USSA not on the table.

It'd be pretty cool to see someone play with that. But instead English language alt-history is, "What if the Great Game involved a monolithic and functioning USA and a monolithic and functioning CSA?"

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

point of return posted:

Have any alternate-universe writers done "What if Japan surrendered and was allowed to keep Korea?"

It could be pretty short, you would have an intense soviet/US/Chinese hotspot on par with Berlin/Europe. You might have the US diplomats struggling to rewrite the Japanese constitution, and would there still be a Japanese military 'keeping' Korea? The Korean War would have gotten much hotter - the Soviets always wanted more warm water ports. The US might want to work with Japan against China/Russia - but I don't think the Koreans would appreciate any of these occupiers, and US troops might not like fighting next to the Japanese Imperials.

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
An Imperial Japanese foothold in Korea coupled with a still raging colonial Imperial Japan would have prevented the whole "China" part of that axis. Collaborative warlords like Yan Xishan would have had a lot more skin in that game if Japan had remained a substantial regional power.

Edit: The Sinosphere would probably end up playing out like the ME, where a bunch of regional strongmen would play Russia and America against each other. Depending on how post-colonialism went, it could also do some "complicated" things with India and Pakistan. That's kinda contingent on how Tibet plays out, especially British involvement/ownership of Tibet.

It'd be Domino Effect on some serious steroids.

Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Aug 28, 2015

PenisMonkey
Apr 30, 2004

Be gentally.
Yeah but how did Japan pull off 9/11?

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
Maybe we should fuse the "Ethics of the Bomb" chat with the "Ethics of the Bomb" thread?

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3735110&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
world war 2 was a false flag and it should have been obvious to everyone from the moment they named it like a Hollywood sequel wake up

Smoothrich
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 2 years!

InediblePenguin posted:

world war 2 was a false flag and it should have been obvious to everyone from the moment they named it like a Hollywood sequel wake up

It's hard to follow up the War to End All Wars but they found a great villain to carry the weak plot. Maybe Adolf Hitler as the next Joker?

JJ Abrams should reboot World Wars after Star Wars.. Imagine the merchandising opportunities.

James Cameron is actually developing a movie about a guy who survived being nuked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki which sounds hilarious.

Smoothrich fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Aug 28, 2015

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Smoothrich posted:

James Cameron is actually developing a movie about a guy who survived being nuked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki which sounds hilarious.

Almost as good as the result of Michael Bay directing it.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Shbobdb posted:

LOL. Have any other strawmen guarding that cornfield of yours?

:ironicat:

For real, is a total lack of self-awareness part of your gimmick? You falsely accused me of defending atomic weapons and slavery, aren't you being a little too overt?

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
Wow.

You are really clinging to your strawman, aren't you?

Have fun being crazier than the "Here, watch my 5 hour movie that totally shows why 9/11 was an inside job"-dude.

Edit: Can you show me where you got the impression that I think the Japanese were ready to "meekly surrender"? Because that's not at all what I said. I said that they wanted a "Peace with honor" and the Allies wanted a clear, total victory. The Americans also sure-as-poo poo didn't want the Japanese surrendering via the Russians. So, BOOM, war crime time!

Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Aug 28, 2015

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Shbobdb posted:

Wow.

You are really clinging to your strawman, aren't you?

Have fun being crazier than the "Here, watch my 5 hour movie that totally shows why 9/11 was an inside job"-dude.

Okay are you actually doubling down on this "dislikes historical revisionism = condones slavery and atomic warfare" ridiculousness, or is that just more of your gimmick?

Shbobdb posted:

Edit: Can you show me where you got the impression that I think the Japanese were ready to "meekly surrender"? Because that's not at all what I said. I said that they wanted a "Peace with honor" and the Allies wanted a clear, total victory. The Americans also sure-as-poo poo didn't want the Japanese surrendering via the Russians. So, BOOM, war crime time!

Well there's this post, the one that I replied to, where you say "surrender" and not "negotiate a peace with honor":

Shbobdb posted:

It's been pretty well established that Japan was ready to surrender.

It's been well-established that Japan was ready to negotiate a peace, but not a total surrender. We agree there, so at this point you're just spinning in circles like an idiot because you're bad at reading comprehension. No worries

But really, if someone says "hey you're engaging in some historical revisionism there buddy" your first response should not be "I BET YOU'RE A TRUTHER WHO RAPES CHILDREN TOO"

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Smoothrich posted:

It's hard to follow up the War to End All Wars but they found a great villain to carry the weak plot. Maybe Adolf Hitler as the next Joker?

JJ Abrams should reboot World Wars after Star Wars.. Imagine the merchandising opportunities.

James Cameron is actually developing a movie about a guy who survived being nuked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki which sounds hilarious.

That was a real guy. He lost both his job and his mom, one first and the other the next day, but he was fine otherwise. He lived to be 80-something, I think.

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

Wow man, you are pretty bum gently caress crazy. Take a look at what I've written and you'll see we aren't really at odds here. The only difference is that you are defending a horrific war crime and I'm saying that said war crime was a bad thing.

It's an important distinction.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Shbobdb posted:

Wow man, you are pretty bum gently caress crazy. Take a look at what I've written and you'll see we aren't really at odds here. The only difference is that you are defending a horrific war crime and I'm saying that said war crime was a bad thing.

It's an important distinction.

Yes, that's correct. I'm just going to quote part of my previous post because you're still failing at basic reading comprehension

QuarkJets posted:

We agree there, so at this point you're just spinning in circles like an idiot because you're bad at reading comprehension.

I never once defended a war crime of any sort, especially not usage of atomic weapons, hth

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

Shbobdb posted:

It wasn't a "false flag" per se, but the real reasons why we did it are at odds with the official reasons why we did it.

this is an important part of conspiratorial thinking - there's this idea that something happened because of reason A, the stated reason in the history books, and the actual reason B, some nefarious dark and secret knowledge, but too often people fail to recognize the existence of reason C, some fanciful and incorrect common knowledge that the conspiracy theorist is trapped within and refuses to acknowledge

like the moon landing - reason A is for the advancement of science and the benefit of mankind, reason B is that it was an extension of the cold war nuclear arms race that devolved into prestige-chasing and dick waving, and reason C, the unshakeable belief that the government is always lying all of the time and that you just need to look hard enough at the tea leaves to figure out how and why

on 9/11 reason A was that the terrorists hated our freedoms, reason B was that we were completely unprepared with lax security and response plans to deal with an attack of this nature, and reason C, that it's hard to accept that sometimes the world is horrifying and a group of ideological fanatics can and will cook up a plan that can cripple the world's most powerful nation

people often get so hung up patting themselves on the back that they know B that they completely miss C

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Aug 28, 2015

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

I like how I accuse you of missing the point and sucking at reading (and life in general) and your come-back is to say "Naw-aw! You suck at reading!"

It's like, hilariously terrible semantic bullshit.

QuarkJets posted:


I never said the Holocaust never happened, I said that the Nazis failed to solve the Jewish Problem!

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene

Popular Thug Drink posted:

this is an important part of conspiratorial thinking - there's this idea that something happened because of reason A, the stated reason in the history books, and the actual reason B, some nefarious dark and secret knowledge, but too often people fail to recognize the existence of reason C, some fanciful and incorrect common knowledge that the conspiracy theorist is trapped within and refuses to acknowledge

like the moon landing - reason A is for the advancement of science and the benefit of mankind, reason B is that it was an extension of the cold war nuclear arms race that devolved into prestige-chasing and dick waving, and reason C, the unshakeable belief that the government is always lying all of the time and that you just need to look hard enough at the tea leaves to figure out how and why

on 9/11 reason A was that the terrorists hated our freedoms, reason B was that we were completely unprepared with lax security and response plans to deal with an attack of this nature, and reason C, that it's hard to accept that sometimes the world is horrifying and a group of ideological fanatics can and will cook up a plan that can cripple the world's most powerful nation

people often get so hung up patting themselves on the back that they know B that they completely miss C

Totally. This is a good post and everybody should read it. The tension we all recognize between the official narrative and the actual reasons.

You have the Space Race, where reason A is the advancement of science and the human spirit, reason B is "We have ICBM capability" initially followed by a more subtle "Our way is better than your way". The dissonance between "A" and "B" can totally create C: The Government is always lying. That's not a bad place to be. Look at Iraq. Reason A is: Iraq presents an existential threat to the US and is developing nuclear weapons. Reason B is: Bush, the NeoCons and PNAC really want to engage in Nation Building in a relatively stable Middle Eastern country. So you end up with C: the government is always lying.

But "the government is lying" is pretty loving facile. It is a question of who is lying about what and why.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

Shbobdb posted:

But "the government is lying" is pretty loving facile. It is a question of who is lying about what and why.

people lying to themselves that they can identify and understand patterns and motivations in an obscure and incomprehensible world

it's way easier to accept a shadowy global conspiracy than that the rhetorical you, as an individual, cannot and will not understand events and consequences which are often incomprehensible to the people directly involved

we're driven to conceptualize the world as narratives of heroes and villans with identifiable goals where events occur in a logically causal way, that the concept that things just happen chaotically becomes difficult to understand. so we invent narratives and bad guys, like the illuminati

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Aug 28, 2015

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
I agree the human mind is naturally fecund and tends towards over-analysis. That doesn't mean that "bad guys" like the Illuminati aren't real. We live in a world where shadowy goverment organizations kidnap people and subject them to psychotropic drugs in the hopes of inventing a truth serum. A world where secret paramilitary organizations are purposefully created and "left behind" to engage in guerrilla warfare. A world where trained guerrilla fighters turn on those who trained them and use their training to strike out at their trainers. A world where respected military generals swear up and down that intelligence that they know to be false is true. A world where power players engage in child prostitution as a form of mutual blackmail. A world where people create industrialized murder factories.

It is always easy to unravel these "conspiracies" with the benefit of hindsight. And yes, there is not a single force behind all of them. But we know of numerous conspiracies that have existed, so it seems naive to me to think that conspiracies don't exist now. It's just a matter of teasing out what is real and what is paranoia. Admittedly, it isn't easy.

But that's why a scientific approach and a narrative framework is important. The narrative framework lets you create clear hypotheses as to what will happen. The scientific approach forces you to examine and re-evaluate when your predictions are wrong.

One of the most frustrating moments of my life was when someone with a very different narrative framework from my own copped out on both his prediction that Hillary would be the Democratic nominee in 2008 and then later that McCain would win. In both cases he just said, "Huh. Looks like the Rockefellers decided to change their mind at the last minute." His self-reinforcing narrative remained unshaken and unexamined because it was unshakable and unexaminable. I was frustrated, not with him -- OK, yes, I was very frustrated with him, but I was more frustrated with myself. I'd wasted a lot of time presenting a testable narrative framework to someone who wasn't interested in verifiability.

Conspiracies are real, we can clearly see that when we look backwards through history. The real question is: how can our understanding of the past and the present help us predict and shape the future? While the Lucifer Project was terrible for the Martians, my outlook is unabashedly luciferian. We need to use the light of our knowledge to understand our present so we can create the future.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

Shbobdb posted:

Conspiracies are real, we can clearly see that when we look backwards through history.

yes, but every conspiracy that's been exposed is exposed exactly because humans are fallible, blow whistles, and leave huge paper trails, factors which are commonly lacking in the common theology of wacky bonafide conspiracy theories

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
Sure, but you are thinking backwards.

If I said that the CIA kidnapped me and pumped me full of mind altering drugs, it would totally make sense to dismiss me as crazy since that is the sort of poo poo crazy people say. Fast forward twenty years and you've got a long list of whistle blowers, the paper trail, the general human gently caress-ups that let people know conspiracies are going on.

Do you want to live in the present? The real present, the one that will be validated in 20 years and viewed as just plain common knowledge. Or do you want to live in some simulacrum of the "present" where twenty years from now people will look back and wonder, "What the hell were they thinking? It was all so obvious!"

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
"obviously the Illuminati aren't real, but also the Illuminati are totally real." there's "not one group behind all of the conspiracies" but "that doesn't mean the Illuminati aren't real." I must not be understanding what you actually intend to be expressing, because to me it feels like you are going in rather self-contradictory circles. You might make more sense if you put more effort into explaining what you mean than into shitposting replies to other people tbqh

Mr. Sunshine
May 15, 2008

This is a scrunt that has been in space too long and become a Lunt (Long Scrunt)

Fun Shoe

Shbobdb posted:

Do you want to live in the present? The real present, the one that will be validated in 20 years and viewed as just plain common knowledge. Or do you want to live in some simulacrum of the "present" where twenty years from now people will look back and wonder, "What the hell were they thinking? It was all so obvious!"

There's a problem here. You have no method to distinguish between "the real present" and "the simulacrum of the present" unless you possess useful evidence showing that what really happens is different from what is being claimed happens. If you have no such proof, there is no way to distinguish between your view of reality and delusion - even if in 20 years you are proven right.

e: I realize I am arguing with a gimmick, but it's an important point to make.

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
That's too nihilistic for me, I do fundamentally believe that there is an important difference between having an understanding of the present and the world around you that is borne out by the passage of time and having an acceptance of the present and the world around you that is ultimately shown to be false. I agree that at the time there is no way to tell them apart.

But it does matter. If for no other reason, than for practicality. Look at various millennialist disappointments, where people's understanding of the present tells them there is no future so they gave up everything. Then, when their understanding of the present was shown to be false, they were left with nothing. It's an extreme example, but it plays out a million times every day on a less catastrophic scale. When people buy stocks, when people save money, when people stockpile gold, when people actively choose not to save money, when people store food, when people build bomb shelters . . . . it goes on and on.

The nihilist (perhaps correctly) says that there is no way to know who is right and which actions are better. But no one really lives that way and if your philosophy isn't livable, what's the point? There's no Higgs-Boson, no Superstring of philosophy other than living a good life. Maybe I am just a brain in a vat, so what?

Any philosophy that separates our ontological being from our existential becoming is a philosophy of death. And I categorically reject death worship.

Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Aug 28, 2015

Mr. Sunshine
May 15, 2008

This is a scrunt that has been in space too long and become a Lunt (Long Scrunt)

Fun Shoe

Shbobdb posted:

The nihilist (perhaps correctly) says that there is no way to know who is right and which actions are better. But no one really lives that way and if your philosophy isn't livable, what's the point? There's no Higgs-Boson, no Superstring of philosophy other than living a good life. Maybe I am just a brain in a vat, so what?

That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying "there's no way to know anything, maaaaan". I'm saying that if you believe yourself in possession of some secret knowledge that no-one else (or very few people) believe in, unless you can convincingly prove that knowledge to be true there is no way for the rest of us to know if you are correct or just delusional.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Shbobdb posted:

The nihilist (perhaps correctly) says that there is no way to know who is right and which actions are better. But no one really lives that way and if your philosophy isn't livable, what's the point? There's no Higgs-Boson, no Superstring of philosophy other than living a good life. Maybe I am just a brain in a vat, so what?

You work on the best available evidence and probability and if things don't work out for the best, well, poo poo happens. Accepting the fact that poo poo happens is one important thing conspiracy theorists refuse to do.

e:

Shbobdb posted:

Given the benefit of hindsight and having access to information that players on all sides didn't have at the time, what you say is factually correct. But it leaves out a critical detail, which is that the Suzuki administration* was trying to use Chiang Kai-shek (in retrospect, LOL) as an intermediary to surrender to the Allies via Russia. Because of Cold War politics that were already ossifying, the US wasn't going to have that. MacArthur knew they wanted to surrender using Russia as an intermediary and that was utterly unacceptable to American interests.

Except Japan was around to witness the allies pounding Germany into dust despite bloody fighting to force its unconditional surrender and take away all its colonies while they were at it. Putting two and two together instead of sticking their head in the sand should have led the Japanese government to conclude that, yes, they would get their poo poo kicked in as well.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Aug 28, 2015

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

blowfish posted:

You work on the best available evidence and probability and if things don't work out for the best, well, poo poo happens. Accepting the fact that poo poo happens is one important thing conspiracy theorists refuse to do.

That's what the jewish lizard illuminai want you to think

Fuck You And Diebold
Sep 15, 2004

by Athanatos

Ugh, crazy on my facebook is running with this, including some dumb thing where the boyfriend tweeted about the reporter dying before it happened, easily explained by twitter changing timestamps based on which time zone you are currently in.

Also harping on the "crisis actors" thing that pops up for every disaster ever now apparently, because the boyfriend wasn't emotional enough during an interview.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

Ugh, crazy on my facebook is running with this, including some dumb thing where the boyfriend tweeted about the reporter dying before it happened, easily explained by twitter changing timestamps based on which time zone you are currently in.

Also harping on the "crisis actors" thing that pops up for every disaster ever now apparently, because the boyfriend wasn't emotional enough during an interview.

i'm a giant rear end in a top hat. i know this guy who's all about conspiracy theories and he and i used to argue on facebook all the time, that is until his dog jumped his fence and got hit by a car, and i asked him if he was sure it was his dog and not some other dog that the CIA swapped in in order to stage a false flag gaslighting and maybe he's just not asking the right questions and his dog is still alive somewhere. anyway he got pretty mad and blocked me

Fuck You And Diebold
Sep 15, 2004

by Athanatos

Popular Thug Drink posted:

i'm a giant rear end in a top hat. i know this guy who's all about conspiracy theories and he and i used to argue on facebook all the time, that is until his dog jumped his fence and got hit by a car, and i asked him if he was sure it was his dog and not some other dog that the CIA swapped in in order to stage a false flag gaslighting and maybe he's just not asking the right questions and his dog is still alive somewhere. anyway he got pretty mad and blocked me

Hahaha drat. I might do that with this guy. It's was fun arguing with him when it was all crystal healing and hollow earth poo poo, but now its all every mass shooting is a false flag and all the victims were fake and the 'survivors' are lying etc. Plus he has enough friends that are into the same bullshit that any time anyone disagrees with it they are drowned out by a bunch of people going

"Hasn't even been 24 hours before the boyfriends starts talking about memorial funds, scholarships, etc. NO TEARS! Guy looks totally fine! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1tfXhNLGp4"

"Or maybe he was struggling to remember his script"

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zakharov
Nov 30, 2002

:kimchi: Tater Love :kimchi:
Did this thread ever catch a moon landing conspiracy True Believer? I know it's gotten 9/11 and JFK people every now and then...

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