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Mooseontheloose posted:Gen Xers still had affordable housing options. Cities were still rebuilding from the 60s and 70s white flight. And apathy--the defining trait of Gen X--is de facto support for the status quo. Not wanting to be too prescriptive with generational traits, though. Generational warfare is a tool of the elites but also there's something to be said about age cohorts experiencing the same things at the same time that do create behavioral and ideological trends in cohort members. Kinda like the lead making mawmaw racist--maybe, but it's not the only thing going on.
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Jun 6, 2023 16:39
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Judgy Fucker posted:And apathy--the defining trait of Gen X--is de facto support for the status quo. Oh yah the whole generational thing is interesting because I think there are events that define generation and they experience things differently but yah it also comes from a wealthy/white perspective and then regional perspective.
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Jun 6, 2023 16:44
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Generational warfare is astrology. They're defined by marketing firms based on sociological studies. Baby boomers are such a large generation that boomers born in the late forties lived very different lives than those born at the peak of the baby boom in the late fifties.
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Jun 6, 2023 18:04
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Yeah that's what I think. That's obviously not a fault of him or anyone who doesn't know about him, just the reality that he's not at the peak of his popularity and that peak wasn't high. i'm not sure how i'd prove that so I guess I'll concede? It's like trying to prove that Morris Chestnut is well known in the black community but basically unheard of among whites. Or the song This Christmas
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Jun 6, 2023 18:20
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Jaxyon posted:i'm not sure how i'd prove that so I guess I'll concede? Fair enough but I think there will be some resolution here. I think it's more likely than not that at least one pollster throws him in, then you have a metric on % of people (probably broken down by race) who say they know him well enough to have an opinion
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Jun 6, 2023 18:36
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Star Man posted:Generational warfare is astrology. They're defined by marketing firms based on sociological studies. Baby boomers are such a large generation that boomers born in the late forties lived very different lives than those born at the peak of the baby boom in the late fifties. Yep. But the marketing on it is so good that people use it as prescriptive all the time. It's total bunk garbage, but as someone mentioned upstream society is incredibly fractal at this point, so it's very easy to convince yourself that you share meaningful similarities with the x00,000,000 people who share the same 2 decades birthdate as you if you only talk to people who are very similar to you in the first place. Same job, same interests, same political leaning being reinforced by a dead gay comedy website like Twitter, or even Something Awful! KillHour posted:NATO is a mutual defense treaty, not a vehicle for empire building. We are also currently in a situation where one of the countries who had been begging to be let in for the last decade is in a hot war with a neighbor looking to do some empire building with a heaping side dish of genocide. It's tricky to define NATO as being only a defense treaty, though. By many accounts NATO is basically just the forceful arm of US hegemony. If the other member nations of NATO didn't supply any assistance to it at all, it would still be ... more or less the same as it is now. And while NATO isn't typically used in imperialistic conquest wars, it was very much involved in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The US being obviously imperialistic is legitimately something for countries to be wary of (specifically Iran and Russia, imo) and NATO being like the US in a trench coat but also holding a cat doesn't persuade US enemies, "enemies," or frenemies that it's not at the whim of whatever foreign policy the US has at any given time.
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Jun 6, 2023 18:45
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Ershalim posted:Yep. But the marketing on it is so good that people use it as prescriptive all the time. It's total bunk garbage, but as someone mentioned upstream society is incredibly fractal at this point, so it's very easy to convince yourself that you share meaningful similarities with the x00,000,000 people who share the same 2 decades birthdate as you if you only talk to people who are very similar to you in the first place. Same job, same interests, same political leaning being reinforced by a dead gay comedy website like Twitter, or even Something Awful! NATO was involved in Afghanistan because that war had the broad support of NATO's membership (and the UN Security Council for that matter.) NATOs involvement in the 2003 Iraq war was extremely limited precisely because how much of NATO's membership severely doubted the US. As a tool of US hegemony it seems pretty ineffective, and if anything pretty resistant to the US' whims. Like the whole 'Coalition of the Willing' thing was precisely because the US couldn't get nor force nations to sign on nearly as much as it wanted to.
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Jun 6, 2023 19:09
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:NATO was involved in Afghanistan because that war had the broad support of NATO's membership (and the UN Security Council for that matter.) NATOs involvement in the 2003 Iraq war was extremely limited precisely because how much of NATO's membership severely doubted the US. As a tool of US hegemony it seems pretty ineffective, and if anything pretty resistant to the US' whims. Exactly - NATO is a specific treaty requiring participating countries to guarantee mutual defense. Using it as shorthand for "countries that happen to be a part of NATO and want to go do imperialism together" is misleading at best. There's a difference between "we should do less imperialism" and "we should let our allies be invaded by their neighbors because military action is always bad" KillHour fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 19:19
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Ershalim posted:It's tricky to define NATO as being only a defense treaty, though. By many accounts NATO is basically just the forceful arm of US hegemony. If the other member nations of NATO didn't supply any assistance to it at all, it would still be ... more or less the same as it is now. And while NATO isn't typically used in imperialistic conquest wars, it was very much involved in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The US being obviously imperialistic is legitimately something for countries to be wary of (specifically Iran and Russia, imo) and NATO being like the US in a trench coat but also holding a cat doesn't persuade US enemies, "enemies," or frenemies that it's not at the whim of whatever foreign policy the US has at any given time. Russia is wary of NATO precisely because it exists to prevent Russia as the USSR successor from invading NATO member states, and Russia wants to retain a prerogative as a regional power to do so.
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Jun 6, 2023 19:36
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Even if NATO is just "the US in a trenchcoat" it is perhaps not a coincidence that smaller countries bordering Russia whose territory Russia claims want to join a mutual defense treaty with the US
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Jun 6, 2023 19:48
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Harold Fjord posted:I'd be madder at them if we didn't have recent examples of, say, cops threatening their mayor's families and stuff like that. I was wondering how much the support is astroturfed, or I guess as you show, "enhanced astroturfed" versus people somehow having genuine support for it. Are there a lot of people that want it beyond just manufactured consent?
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Jun 6, 2023 20:05
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I was wondering how much the support is astroturfed, or I guess as you show, "enhanced astroturfed" versus people somehow having genuine support for it. Are there a lot of people that want it beyond just manufactured consent? anecdotally and in, uh, not Atlanta, it's pretty tough to explain why Cop City is bad / worth thinking more than two seconds about if the other person doesn't already hate and fear the police. The environmental argument (it's a nice little nature area in Atlanta that should be there for the wildlife and the locals) has been way way more successful than "the police shouldn't have a fancy paramilitarized training facility because cops are bad and it will make them worse".
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Jun 6, 2023 20:24
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I was wondering how much the support is astroturfed, or I guess as you show, "enhanced astroturfed" versus people somehow having genuine support for it. Are there a lot of people that want it beyond just manufactured consent? Sure, there are people that want it. The minority that live in Buckhead, the rich section of the city that wants to secede following the 2020 protests, and where about 40% of the city's tax base resides. Plus the corporations that sponsor the Atlanta Police Foundation. I'm not sure what you would call that. An NGO? A supra-police union? Although it doesn't seem to take any input from the cops themselves. It's all really hosed up. A lot of people have also been speculating that aside from those obvious reasons, whether there's something else going on that we can't see. Because the city seems so, so, so, so dug in about this and the incentives might go beyond normal money.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:26
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Google Jeb Bush posted:anecdotally and in, uh, not Atlanta, it's pretty tough to explain why Cop City is bad / worth thinking more than two seconds about if the other person doesn't already hate and fear the police. The environmental argument (it's a nice little nature area in Atlanta that should be there for the wildlife and the locals) has been way way more successful than "the police shouldn't have a fancy paramilitarized training facility because cops are bad and it will make them worse". Oh, and the city has explicitly stated that they want to bring in revenue by bringing in trainees from all over the country and maybe beyond. Israel maybe? Sounds plausible.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:30
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Victar posted:I've been reading things about how Gen X is turning more right-wing. Much like the last piece that got posted here about a generation moving right, this seems to be a pretty crappy piece with extremely flawed data. They even acknowledge it themselves once you've read past the initial clickbait. It makes the same mistake as the last one: they just grab two election years and look at how a generation voted in those two years, with absolutely zero effort made to control for the differences between those two election years. Hell, this one is actually worse, because it's comparing a presidential election year to a midterm election year.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:38
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Talk about generations is highly imprecise and a little arbitrary, but it’s hardly comparable to astrology. Cohort effects are real and measurable. Generations are just bundles of cohorts that are close in time. That’s it.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:44
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James Garfield posted:Even if NATO is just "the US in a trenchcoat" it is perhaps not a coincidence that smaller countries bordering Russia whose territory Russia claims want to join a mutual defense treaty with the US Part of the craziness of it all is that NATO was absolutely ebbing in its cohesiveness, sense of purpose, and subjectivity to US control, and Europe was happy doing business with Russia, even the parts worried about Russian revanchism. All Putin had to do die old, happy, and a hero of both Russians and international opposition to US hegemony was....nothing. Cultivate soft power, keep the open kleptocracy to a plausibly deniable level, and talk a nationalist game. Hell, even more specifically if he hadn't invaded last spring when US intelligence agencies were calling it in advance while most others were doubtful, it would have left the US with a lot of egg on its face. But he couldn't hold back from dreams of rebuilding the full empire, any more than a certain stripe of "anti-imperialist" couldn't help but insist that no really he was doing anti-imperialism in all those places.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:45
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James Garfield posted:Even if NATO is just "the US in a trenchcoat" it is perhaps not a coincidence that smaller countries bordering Russia whose territory Russia claims want to join a mutual defense treaty with the US Yeah, that's presumably a big part of why Russia's upset about it. And it's entirely possible that I'm not making a good argument at all, but I think the UN and NATO (to a lesser extent) function as ways to solidify power of the already powerful. The security council makes it so the UN has literally no teeth against any of the major powers it represents, and so from my perspective NATO is primarily used to keep people out of the in-group, and out of other people's in-groups. Because US influence is already more or less ubiquitous, it's hard to describe NATO's function as purely defensive because its very existence forcibly determines other people's options. Implied or explicitly -- the smaller countries around Russia want to join in our sphere of influence because they don't want to be engulfed by Russia's. In reality I think they'd probably prefer to just be their own countries. But when your choices are build nukes or be subjected to random imperialist jaunts, "applying to join" one of the imperialist sides is probably the only reasonable "choice" a lot of places have. TheDeadlyShoe posted:NATO was involved in Afghanistan because that war had the broad support of NATO's membership (and the UN Security Council for that matter.) NATOs involvement in the 2003 Iraq war was extremely limited precisely because how much of NATO's membership severely doubted the US. As a tool of US hegemony it seems pretty ineffective, and if anything pretty resistant to the US' whims. Yes, that's why I didn't mention the Iraq invasion of 2003.  But what you're right about is the fact that NATO is extremely limited in what it can do. It can't just go claim nations and scoop them up like a colonial empire might. The thing is though, it doesn't have to do that to be imperialist. NATO exists as a pressure to the whole world that they have (sort of) 3 choices. 1) Either be their own thing (and thus subsequent to other empires grabbing them up), 2) choose to become an enemy of all the NATO countries by sidling up to the empires it opposes -- usually Russia, but also probably China, if it comes to that. or 3) join up with NATO for protection from those other scenarios.I think that viewing imperialism with a classical lens misses a lot of the pressures that modern day alliances have on countries that "aren't involved" so to speak. NATO not invading and annexing things directly doesn't mean it doesn't exert pressure on the world in a similar way -- with similar outcomes. I'm not saying Russia is correct in its perception that NATO is western imperialism by another name, but I am saying that that perspective isn't unwarranted. Global politics and power is super complicated and while it's easy to see NATO as a united defensive front from the perspective of someone in it, it's also pretty easy to see it as a power grab from the perspective of someone that isn't. Ershalim fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 20:47
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:apparently Cornel West published a WSJ op-ed in May congratulating DeSantis for his "Revolutionary Defense of the Classics", saying 'Promoting the Western canon shouldn't be only a Republican talking point.' a professor of divinity has opinions about christianity??????? Civilized Fishbot posted:Yeah that's what I think. That's obviously not a fault of him or anyone who doesn't know about him, just the reality that he's not at the peak of his popularity and that peak wasn't high. tech n9ne & the rock posted:Brush myself off, my thoughts of a goddamn boss (Woo) wow, tech n9ne and the rock must love the matrix!!!! lupe fiasco posted:Ivy League was running really well then wow, lupe fiasco too??? the strokes posted:He can tell that we're oblivious wow the strokes too?? e-40 posted:[Interlude: E-40] oh dang e-40? also a matrix fan macklemore posted:You read bell hooks and Cornell West ok macklemore being deep into matrix lore doesn't surprise me killer mike posted:Read an old magazine, check out a new dress i wonder if killer mike, e-40, the strokes, lupe fiasco, macklemore, tech n9ne, and dwayne "the rock" johnson all had a matrix watch party and that's why they all know who this obscure figure is and wanted to make reference to him in their songs?  need i go on posted:My heart bundled up for winter
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Jun 6, 2023 21:03
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HookedOnChthonics posted:i wonder if killer mike, e-40, the strokes, lupe fiasco, macklemore, tech n9ne, and dwayne "the rock" johnson all had a matrix watch party and that's why they all know who this obscure figure is and wanted to make reference to him in their songs? Successful artists are usually woker and more culturally literate than the average bear, and often shout out their more obscure influences. I also don't think the average American, or average American of any particular race, knows who Yosef Jochannon or Cheikh Anta Diop are.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:12
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Ershalim posted:The thing is though, it doesn't have to do that to be imperialist. NATO exists as a pressure to the whole world that they have (sort of) 3 choices. 1) Either be their own thing (and thus subsequent to other empires grabbing them up), 2) choose to become an enemy of all the NATO countries by sidling up to the empires it opposes -- usually Russia, but also probably China, if it comes to that. or 3) join up with NATO for protection from those other scenarios. If NATO didn't exist, countries would still be subject to non-NATO empires asserting power over them. The only realistic way to avoid something like that would be to join up with another empire or to join some kind of mutual defense pact capable of opposing empires. The idea that the existence of that mutual defense pact is itself causing imperialism is a bit bizarre.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:13
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Main Paineframe posted:The idea that the existence of that mutual defense pact is itself causing imperialism is a bit bizarre. There's a whole school of academic thought that suggests otherwise Not saying that school is necessarily correct, just pointing out there are more than a few IR academics who don't think that scenario is particularly bizarre fwiw
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Jun 6, 2023 21:15
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Successful artists are usually woker and more culturally literate than the average bear, and often shout out their more obscure influences. or, and just going by occams razor here, the person consistently mentioned in the same breath as malcolm and martin and huey newton might actually be of similar prominence (if you're not using hollywood nerd media as your main way of learning about the world, i guess) and that song in particular, notice how the obscure authors get a specific title named, while cornel west does not: https://genius.com/Krs-one-free-the-book-song-lyrics what might this tell you, contextually, about their relative notoriety?
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Jun 6, 2023 21:25
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In "You hate to see.. no, you don't hate to see it" news.. The right of right wing are still having a major sad that they didn't get to crater the economy and are trying to flex the muscle that they lacked in the debt ceiling fight in unrelated matters as a result, meaning that the GOP can't even do their performative bullshit "pass bills to culture war the base" https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4037211-conservatives-revolt-against-gop-leaders-on-house-floor/ (5 minute rule vote stretches to 50 as they try to get them to vote Aye on a save the gas stoves bill, but still fails)
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Jun 6, 2023 21:30
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Dang it sure is weird that despite evidence someone still considers this prominent black intellectual as fringe.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:34
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Does NATO actually grant any meaningful power over the countries that join it? In what meaningful way is joining NATO actually "joining the imperialist side" when, as you point out, NATO doesn't have any power to compel its members to do Imperialism? Joining NATO offers two-fold benefits - powerful military allies in the case of being invaded by any foreign power, and powerful disincentives for foreign powers to invade you - including other members of NATO. The exchange is that you will come to the defensive aid of the other members if (and only if) they are attacked. As far as I am aware, there are no meaningful obligations in terms of loss of sovereignty there. Ershalim posted:Yes, that's why I didn't mention the Iraq invasion of 2003. In what way does sidling up to the empires NATO opposes make you an enemy of NATO countries? What does that actually mean? Germany and most of Europe had been cozying up to Russia for quite a while, and they are NATO. Plenty of other countries are still happily doing business with China and Russia without even the hint of being enemies of NATO. And what does being an enemy of NATO actually mean, here, in terms of negative consequences? And how does NATO existing create option 1? The risk of other nations grabbing them up is basically the default. How do you actually imagine anything would be better for anyone if NATO didn't exist?
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Jun 6, 2023 21:35
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HookedOnChthonics posted:(if you're not using hollywood nerd media as your main way of learning about the world, i guess) Most Americans do learn about the world from what's on TV. Whether we know about someone is basically whether we've seen them on TV enough. This is why the art of political campaigning is mostly the art of getting TV shows to talk about you and putting advertisements on the TV. HookedOnChthonics posted:and that song in particular, notice how the obscure authors get a specific title named, while cornel west does not: https://genius.com/Krs-one-free-the-book-song-lyrics what might this tell you, contextually, about their relative notoriety? I don't think you can use KRS-One lyrics to know which names are and aren't recognizable in the American public. KRS-One isn't an average anything and doesn't optimize his work to be maximally understood by the average anything. That's really a crazy and disturbing way to approach what art can tell us about the world. The reality is that for most Americans - or most White Americans or most Black Americans or most [race] Americans - to know who or what you are, you need a lot of prominence, a level of prominence that doesn't happen without a successful marketing campaign. Most Americans can't name anyone on the Supreme Court. Most Americans can't name their own representative in the house. West has not been marketed to the public - any public - in this way Jaxyon posted:Dang it sure is weird that despite evidence someone still considers this prominent black intellectual as fringe. "Prominent intellectual" means "not very prominent" in the actual country we live in. It's weird to think that the scale of his public recognition is going to be proportional to his intellectual or political merit. We don't live in an attention meritocracy Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 21:44
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Jaxyon posted:Dang it sure is weird that despite evidence someone still considers this prominent black intellectual as fringe. Yeah, he's clearly not fringe. I can't say I agree with him all the time, but I've heard him quite a bit (as a white Canadian) and... dude makes some good points. Also some really, really loving crazy points, but he's definitely a prominent voice in the public square and one ought to at least consider his ideas deeply whether you end up deciding they're correct or not.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:45
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Jaxyon posted:Dang it sure is weird that despite evidence someone still considers this prominent black intellectual as fringe. no, see, tech n9ne is just one of those elite wokeys trying to intellectually bigshot us from inside the ivory tower  Civilized Fishbot posted:Most Americans do learn about the world from what's on TV. sure. but that would include his very very VERY many appearances on all kinds of talking head documentaries, news programs, debate shows, etc. it is you who looked at his body of work and decided that a walk-on role in the matrix must be his most prominent cultural impact quote:That's really a crazy and disturbing way to approach what art can tell us about the world. hahaha what the gently caress do you mean by this? expand please quote:"Prominent intellectual" means "not very prominent" in the actual country we live in. It's weird to think that the scale of his public recognition is going to be proportional to his intellectual or political merit. We don't live in an attention meritocracy yes obviously we are still talking about a realm of fame/name recognition comparable to mid-tier WWE talent, but that still puts him head and shoulders above e.g. mayor pete HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 21:47
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PT6A posted:Yeah, he's clearly not fringe. I can't say I agree with him all the time, but I've heard him quite a bit (as a white Canadian) and... dude makes some good points. Also some really, really loving crazy points, but he's definitely a prominent voice in the public square and one ought to at least consider his ideas deeply whether you end up deciding they're correct or not. What's he said that's really loving crazy?
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Jun 6, 2023 21:48
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Civilized Fishbot posted:What's he said that's really loving crazy? His praise of DeSantis was a big standout to me.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:52
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Mischievous Mink posted:His praise of DeSantis was a big standout to me. I didn't know you had such ardent opinions about the SAT's.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:54
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It's worth noting that fringe could both mean on the fringe of media visibility and/or fringe in terms of political beliefs. TBH he probably qualifies as both because both his "good" and "bad" politics are outside of the norm in American politics.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:56
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Say what you will about Cornel West, having a conversation about him instead of relitigating 2016 or 2024 is a welcome departure. West was a serious critic of Obama as well. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/barack-obama-legacy-presidency quote:Obama’s lack of courage to confront Wall Street criminals and his lapse of character in ordering drone strikes unintentionally led to rightwing populist revolts at home and ugly Islamic fascist rebellions in the Middle East. And as deporter-in-chief – nearly 2.5 million immigrants were deported under his watch – Obama policies prefigure Trump’s barbaric plans.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:58
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:apparently Cornel West published a WSJ op-ed in May congratulating DeSantis for his "Revolutionary Defense of the Classics", saying 'Promoting the Western canon shouldn't be only a Republican talking point.' Do you have a link to this at all?
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Jun 6, 2023 22:05
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I was wondering how much the support is astroturfed, or I guess as you show, "enhanced astroturfed" versus people somehow having genuine support for it. Are there a lot of people that want it beyond just manufactured consent? I got curious and saw that polling was done back in March by Emory University: https://www.11alive.com/amp/article...1a-c5c20489197d. Granted, this doesn’t answer the question of how people’s support/opposition was influenced, but it shows current support/opposition Tl;dr The support is fairly split overall. Much more supported in Buckhead, slightly more opposed in Atlanta. When looking at race, it’s supported quite a bit more for white respondents and slightly more opposed for Black respondents.
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Jun 6, 2023 22:06
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Fister Roboto posted:Do you have a link to this at all? https://www.wsj.com/articles/desantiss-revolutionary-defense-of-the-classics-florida-western-canon-galileo-caesar-great-books-275268d9 It's got the dumb paywall thing going on, tho.
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Jun 6, 2023 22:09
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Fister Roboto posted:Do you have a link to this at all? Found an archive link earlier quote:Gov. Ron DeSantis just gave a welcome boost to the classical-education movement. He signed legislation allowing high-school students to qualify for Bright Futures scholarships, a state fund for college education, by submitting scores from the Classic Learning Test instead of the SAT alone. Did a cursory search about CLT and criticisms and didn't see anything beyond that CLT was used mostly by homeschoolers and small christian colleges. This was the only easily accessible thing I found with an example passage: https://blog.prepscholar.com/clt-exam-classic-learning-test and unless I'm being snowballed about how everything else is just bible quotes, it seems fine compared to my faded memories of taking the SAT's almost 30 years ago. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to have a strong opinion about a competitor to the SAT's.
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Jun 6, 2023 22:12
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GlyphGryph posted:Does NATO actually grant any meaningful power over the countries that join it? In what meaningful way is joining NATO actually "joining the imperialist side" when, as you point out, NATO doesn't have any power to compel its members to do Imperialism? I don't feel particularly adept at explaining this, so forgive me if some of my phrasing is clumsy. NATO can't compel its members to do imperialism in the manner of taking other counties' land or people, but what it does do is force a situation where there's a compelled "us or them" for countries that exist opposed to the cultural and economic sphere of the alliance itself. I don't mean to say that NATO enforces its constituent nations to behave in coerced ways, but that the existence of the alliance itself forces the rest of the world to view it as something that must be reacted to or defended from in case it acts upon them. The loss of sovereignty isn't an argument that I'm making, but I suppose you could see it as such because of the compelling nature of a bi-polar world structure. It was probably significantly worse in the Cold War era due to it being a more literal "Us vs Them" scenario, but that still exists to a large extent for countries that we (the US) particularly don't like. Like Iran, or Russia. The NATO countries aren't a monolith, but they do often act in concert with economic aggression, for example. GlyphGryph posted:In what way does sidling up to the empires NATO opposes make you an enemy of NATO countries? What does that actually mean? Germany and most of Europe had been cozying up to Russia for quite a while, and they are NATO. Plenty of other countries are still happily doing business with China and Russia without even the hint of being enemies of NATO. And what does being an enemy of NATO actually mean, here, in terms of negative consequences? The thing I'm reaching at is more related to this part. Being an enemy to NATO means that you can be shut out of the greater world as a whole on a number of different levels. The world doesn't really fit into neat organized categories, but the existence of an empire (and a thing that fights against an empire) essentially forces countries to act as if it does. Being an "enemy" of NATO doesn't imply that you're going to be targeted by it for invasion, but it does leave you open to a lot of things that member nations aren't subjected to. Having an arrayed military force that exists outside of your control that has been used in any imperialist way often forces countries to act aggressively in order to avoid future aggression against them. This is a problem they face with other empires as well, but NATO's existence makes the problem worse because it dictates "sides" in a way that defense of a singular nation wouldn't generally have applied to it. My point isn't that NATO is exceptional in this, it's specifically that it's not -- the influence of multipolar bodies of concentrated power are a destabilizing element to global peace and prosperity because they have to be. A world without empire would naturally be more stable than one with them, regardless of the shape or form those empires take. I realize I've probably explained this in a way that's unsatisfying. But a Judgy Fucker mentioned, the argument I'm making is a structural one. The creation of a defensive force is also the creation of something to be defended against.
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Jun 6, 2023 22:13
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Kalli posted:Found an archive link earlier Thanks. I see the point he's trying to make, even though I disagree and don't think he should have made it in the first place. But, one bad op-ed is only barely a strike against him, and certainly not a deal breaker for me.
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Jun 6, 2023 22:25
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