Howard, my Florida homeowner insurance doubled over the course of the past few years. Expecting it to keep rising as DeSantis and the Legislative have done basically nothing and seem to have no clue how this could affect the Florida housing market, one of the biggest economic drivers in the state.
We're obviously on the road to another housing collapse and a resultant recession or worse. But yes, the banks are showing how virtuous they are by providing high interest-rate loans to minorities so they can buy grossly overpriced homes. It just shows how ethical and "anti-racist" everyone is! And if you bring up any of these concerns, surely it's because you're racist and don't want blacks to have nice houses.
And if you mention anything AFTER the crash occurs, those same actors will insist your racism was... somehow... a cause of the crash. Because you didn't believe fervently enough.
I know a bit about the principles behind chatgpt, and I believe that demons exist. I don't think demons made chatgpt output that image - or rather probably not by circumventing it's normal operation. It all depends what is fed into it, including the whole history of interaction the person had.
On a more technical side, basic chatgpt doesn't spontaneously generate images. Some time ago, when I was experimenting with it, it didn't directly generate images at all, only computer code that could generate images. So, in terms of anomalies, I would start from that: is that person running a version of chatgpt that would normally output any images at all? Maybe he has some kind of premium account or pkugins enabled etc.
So first it should be established whether getting an image at all is an anomaly. I took a quick look at the Twitter thread, it doesn't seem to suggest that, rather it focuses on the content of the image.
Now, for a normie liberal bot that generates images, there is nothing shocking or unexpected about the image itself. Probably it did take the Transfiguration icon as inspiration, and it gave it a normie liberal sciency spin.
Or, the programmers put some Easter eggs in there, nudging the system to return things like that at certain times. Wouldn't be surprised.
In the end there is some "devil's work" involved, but I would think that most of it is in the mind of the people controlling chatgpt.
Of course the steamrolling of everything is illegal... And it finally caught up with heretofore pillars of the current order... The lawsuit is a good development, but this attitude that "the internet supersedes everything" has been very harmful and not really lawful (cf privacy issues, predatory marketing, deliberate addictive design etc).
I guess my point is that even if nyt wins their lawsuit, and even if this is widely used as precedent, it doesn't automatically make me feel that it's "problem solved"...
I think with the NYT, it's less about the computers training on the material, but ChatGPT is spitting out blocks of text that are basically exactly what the NYT wrote in the first place. There's a fine line here; there is no copyright allowable on facts, or stating them, but there is copyright on anything beyond that. (In which case, the NYT should have a slam-dunk case, being as their 'facts' are mostly opinion, yes? *snark*)
I have a couple of writer friends whose books have been used to "train" AI, using pirated e-book versions of their work. They're waiting to see what happens with an Authors Guild lawsuit filed by several big names, because it will have implications for other writers who aren't named but are part of the class.
I hope these AI tech douchebags get their asses handed to them. There's something unspeakably lazy—and hardly innovative—about them taking other people's work for free and pocketing billions.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why we are even doing this stuff. It’s only to feed the egos of the techy people. It’s like we live in ‘Revenge of the Nerds’, but on steroids. It’s pure hubris.
I hear ya, sister. I've seen arguments for using AI—which is really just extremely fast, comprehensive computing—in a number of fields, carefully and responsibly, but unleashing it into the wider world just for the fun of it was deeply, criminally reckless.
It’s frightening that I have to question everything my son does in school. It’s scary to not be able to be confident in knowing his voice and then you’re told you’re dumb for questioning the wisdom.
Please consider "the odds". AI programs probably generate millions of images a day, and have probably generated billions. "The odds" are that some would look demonic. This is not proof of an evil spirit that speaks through AI. This does not mean it is likely one does.
Now, considering spirits, that is not in the domain of mathematics. But your newsletter often seems to imply that demons can do things nearly without limit. If they could, I think they would have done so already. Perhaps they would have gone into computers and messed up the nuclear launch codes. If they could speak through computers, I think they do not need AI in order to do so. If they were without limits, we would no be here, humanity would be long gone.
Back to a math-related field, computer programming, AI is code. When you think demons cause something to appear, you are saying they went in and altered the code, or caused the code not to work, or something like that. AI is not thoughts in the way humans experience thoughts, it is code.
But how can you explain the befuddlement of Mr Dreher's former subscribers and their inability to cancel their subscriptions if you don't take into account some sort of demonic possession of the internet?
Re: But your newsletter often seems to imply that demons can do things nearly without limit.
Yes, this is one of my biggest complaints with Rod's demonologiy. He promotes these entities to the status and powers of gods, which puts us well outside of Christian orthodoxy-- something which the early medieval Church condemned when people back then got too superstitious about demons and witchcraft. Demons are created being just like we are. They must obey, and cannot set aside, the laws of nature just as we must. Like us they may have "technologies" which can harness nature in unexpected ways-- perhaps in ways we cannot understand-- and they may have abilities which we lack. But they are not omnipotent, and a "demons of the gaps" theory is no more reputable than a "god of gaps" is.
Actually, you do that, Jon. Rod has never given the entities in question "godlike" powers. He only credits them with what Scripture and the experience of those who have dealt with them tell us they have. Demons and angels may be "created" but that does not subject them to human understanding, limits or abilities. The idea that they must have "technologies" is theology according to Jon, not backed by any authority you could name. Just your own preconceptions.
Yes, but I'd say that while Christianity would hold that denying any demon power is deception, it is also deception to see them in any wrong/evil or potential wrong/evil. As you know, some evil is from human free will, and some from "nature" e.g., tidal waves.
I see Rod as an important man for this world. He is opposing communism/socialism, e.g., far left totalitarianism. He is a "main voice" doing that. As you know, there is a movie coming out from "Live Not By Lies".
I think it is possible Rod is under additional stress because of the great good he does and can do. I also think saying demons appear from outer space or on the internet - Rod seems to say this is probable though not certain - could be a way "the enemy" wants to take him down. Over-ascribing demonic action will make Rod look less credible.
PS - Yes, we can't categorically say demons "can't" speak through computers. Yes, weird things happen with Ouija boards. But if demons are doing it, that because the minds of those with the pointer were effected. My point that "if demons had powers over computers they would have directly manipulated them already" seems valid to me. (You could reply that you think they have done so, but I don't think it is direct, I think it is free will doing evil, posting evil images, etc that results in evil through computers before AI, and computers randomly accessing this after AI.)
I think it is both. Both affecting the minds of the users AND being able to affect the physical world. Because accounts clearly show both. But the latter is more limited and again, requires permissions being granted first. The mental ones do, too, but those are easier to get. Mainly, because humans take that realm less seriously, and have the ability to deny it as "my mind playing tricks on me." When it happens in meatspace, it becomes harder to deny, at least for those who were there, at least for a time. With the passage of time, without reinforcement, humans can rationalize that, too.
On both mental and physical, yes - but we don't think they write code. If they did, much more mischief would likely have been done by this point. I also think that fourth dimensional beings, if they exist, have to be demons, but of that is an opinion, not something I can prove. But I think it is a logic error to think they "must" be demons and also a logic error to think they are "likely" demons. Mystery and evil should not be presumed to be "likely directly demon-caused". Look to ourselves and to "nature" as well as the possibility of demons.
Ultimately, does it matter if the demons are influencing AI directly or indirectly? What is the fruit? The point is not so much about the exact nature of the origins but rather about what is being produced. If you take Dostoevsky's understanding of demons as ideas, what ideas are behind the digital revolution and AI? One can be profoundly critical of all this stuff without necessarily invoking the supernatural at all. See Barba-Kay's 'A Web of Our Own Making."
I absolutely agree. But Rod is talking about an existing entity with a personality, etc. that exists in the spirit world, not an idea. I like and respect Rod so much but I don't want people to start putting him in something approaching the David Icke category (lizard DNA from fourth dimensional lizards who do great evil). He is not there now, but people could, wrongly, do that.
I think putting something forth as "likely to be true" in the spirit world, without the Bible or church leaders talking about it, is not a good idea, especially something that will be seen as so weird. It can drown Rod's important message about the real dangers of the real totalitarian far left. And yes, I think perhaps "Dostoevskian" forces would find something who can to the good Rod does a target,
Richard Gallagher in his Demonic Foes cites a rather unusual case of possession. He is a psychiatrist who was brought into such cases at an early stage to willow out the majority of cases that were only mental illness. In this case the demon(s) caused a car to stall on a dark country road and even invaded a phone conversation that Gallagher and the priest were having and told them off! Before I read that book I thought that the demonic was likely not capable of invading phones (or computers), but that doubt has been put to rest in my mind.
Interesting. I'll have a look at the book. But could you say what Gallagher's proof was that demons caused the car to stall? And in what way did they invade a conversation, e.g., could their voice be heard, according to Gallagher and if so, how did he know?
And underdescribing would play right into their hands. These two quotes come to mind...
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire
“The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy”—Ken Ammi”
The first one is self-explanatory and obvious. The second one, all you need to do is check out the media recasting Satan as heroic, noble, misunderstood. Heck, just the modern "Church of Satan", which denies any involvement or even belief in Satan, yet feel it necessary to call themselves that, incorporate occult rituals and ceremonies into their doings, etc.
Then you see all the open and blatant demonic displays among the more decadent corners of culture, and it becomes hiding in plain sight.
Is anyone here pretending the Devil doesn't exist? I am just insisting on rhe very small o Orthodox position that the Devil is not some sort of junior god.
And literally no one here is saying he is. No one. You keep coming up with this idea that Rod and others here are. But only you use that terminology or assign that authority or power level.
It is odd that you try to take cover behind Orthodoxy as A. Rod is Orthodox and B. the Orthodox have exorcists and C. I do not know much about Orthodox theology specifically, but I doubt they have a hard and fast rule about demons and/or angels having a lack of ability to affect the physical world.
Yes, but I am sure we also agree while "believing they don't exist" is a problem, believing they cause all evil and all mystery is a problem. I don't say Rod is claiming "all" but I say it is possible he is over-ascribing. I did not say "for sure - he is". I think he should reconsider, however, in light of the idea of deception going both ways - failing to see demons or seeing possible demons that are not there.
Considering the totality of his content, and considering the relatively few non-crackpot types even addressing this, I would say he has the balance. The only people complaining are those who consider such talk at all embarrassing, unsightly or ruffling of their preconceptions or own world views.
It's not just in the "Church of Satan". Steve Bannon gave an interview in which the filmmaker said, “My wife had mentioned to me that, you know, ‘Bannon is a little bit like Lucifer in ‘Paradise Lost,’ and I mentioned this to him. I said, ‘You know, that Lucifer character — aka Satan — reminds me of you!’" And Bannon embraced the idea.
Of course, Bannon also once said ""Darkness is good. Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."
It would not surprise me that the NeoCons and NeoCon policy is informed by this "We make our own reality" stuff. Where power, and the idolization of it is, expect spiritual evil to be lurking.
Same with the Left and now throwing around "Rest In Power" when someone they care about croaks. Same thing, "power" being the ultimate objective and its existence, and your belief you control it, justifying whatever you wish it to justify.
I needed to check on that and did. The context was Trump, things like the 2016 election and subsequent remarks. Trump's rude (to say the least) remarks. Bannon says they helped Trump. Some of Trump's remarks could be called dark, some could think Trump is like Satan. The media is getting it wrong (to say it will bring evil, that is racist) but that helps us because people like Trump's rudeness.
I am no Bannon fan but I think that is probably a fair summary of what Bannon says, in context.
(The first article was just some left wing person claiming Bannon liked to be identified with Satan, or with Lucifer in Paradise Lost, with no context or quote, so no evidence there.)
I agree that over-ascription would be a problem, but it seems to me that Rod usually throws the more tenuous stuff out there with a "what if...?" He could perhaps be more explicit in this at times, but that's not the same as over-ascription.
Note that I'm speaking as one who has years of experience with this type of thing, as my parents were Charismatic/Pentecostal "deliverance ministers." Trust me, I know over-ascription when I see it, as my father and I had quite a few disagreements over it.
Agreed. And I come from my own experiences, that from being a paranormal enthusiast and dabbler, and also having taught my own spiritual warfare course in a small group.
It absolutely pays to be cautious, but I see absolutely nothing incautioius about Rod's approach here. And it seems to me that those who object would really rather him not talk about it at all and would rather not consider the subject or the possibilities.
That is so interesting about your Charismatic/Pentecostal background. It is mine as well, though I am no longer part of it.
On Rod, I read him as believing it is not certain, but there is a good likelihood demons speak through AI (and Ouija). Also that it is quite probable (not certain) that UFO aliens are demons. Yes, he does hedge, as in today's "What do you all thing?"...you know how I am, I'm interested in what some say....
Taking just a few minutes, I went back to the first "demons through computers" post - the one on Ouija similar to AI. Rod says:
""High tech Ouija board, for sure". "There is a reason the foundations of modern science are in alchemy" (In context, he did not hedge these words where they appear.)
Regarding on person "He doesn’t seem to factor in the possibility that it could be a kind of non-material zombie through which higher intelligences (demons) are communicating." I read this as "it is an important possibility, not at all unlikely"...otherwise why discuss it at length.
Rod often says things like "but yes, that’s pretty much what Simone (and many others in that field) are talking about: that AI is a vector that allows for the exchange of information with discarnate higher beings" - - His tone is one of approval for the person who said it. He casts no doubt upon it, though he does not say it is certainly right.
PS: I think we agree on Rod. I like him (just paid my one year subscription) and respect him. I agree that he hedges on the "demon stuff". But his belief seems to come down to "I think it likely, though not certain". I think that is enough to damage his reputation at a time when he I hope he will be received credibly regarding totalitarianism. It just hurts to see it, because one of my two main purposes in life (with all my travels and even living in Eastern Europe) is opposing far-left indoctrination and seeing those beliefs enacted politically.
The other thing is that the format of a Substack blog is even different from the AC column - it's a much smaller, paying, audience. He's afforded the "luxury" of being a little more "out there" if he feels like he's bouncing thoughts off a smaller community.
What Scripture says they cannot? Or need it to affect computer systems? The Bible is not the freaking Monster Manual and we are not playing Dungeons and Dragons here. They can affect the material world in all kinds of ways. To say that code is somehow beyond them, or that they are dependent on having to manipulate it specifically is ridiculous.
I think think the point is that God told us about anything important that was around when the Bible was written. The Bible does not directly say "don't try to change your gender" but it lays down principles. It also seems to lay down principles for the demonic. Can you name an instance in the Bible of demons working directly with physical matter, rather than through influencing minds? (Demons, not Satan himself.)
Demons would have to work with matter or physical energy (e.g., electricity) to speak directly through AI.
But yeah, when I first asked AI a question and its response included "gender is a construction of the mind" Christians could say "demons" were "speaking", just not directly. The difference is important.
"He made them, male and female." It is notable that "changing your gender" is scientifically impossible. The fact that we can only castrate people, surgically, chemically, is telling. The fact that we are doing it to children, and there is a loud, insane faction pushing this, hsa the footprints of the demonic all over it. Again, there is a reason Jesus spoke much of the protection of children and issued some of his direst sanctions against those who would harm them.
As for demons affecting physical reality, read the book of Job. Loaded with it. And thats for starters. From diseases, flames, to windstorms, etc, all kinds of physical manifestations.
Also, you cannot discount the experiences of exorcists, who report various physical effects, from the ones mentioned here, to physical objects manifesting, etc.
One last thing, the idea that the Bible presents a comprehensive spreadsheet of their capabilities, ie the Monster Manual reference I used earlier, is itself not Biblical. The Bible just shows some instances, but certainly not all, ever and ever, amen. Such a thing would be impossible for a single book. It makes it clear they are powerful, their abilities are varied, they are more powerful than we are, but are limited in their scope of action. They are stuck within the limitations God has placed them and they also cannot take actions in regard to us, in many cases, without us given them clearance as well.
As I said, it is rarer then mental manifestations, so it is with the Bible. But it is undeniably in Scripture. God has given Satan and his minions domain over the Earth, within limits, with a limited timespan. And Scripture also says, as the time grows short, God will begin retracting HIs restraints on the world even further, and evil will become more blatant and brazen in its activities.
Me? I stated Christians (who believe "in the Bible") believe something like "if it was important God would have told us about it or at least laid down principles about it". Accepting that premise, then - -
If we agree (and not everyone does) that demons doing physical activity is not in the Bible (but happens), then we must agree either (a) God left that out of the Bible though it is important; or (b) although it may happen, it is not important. - That is hardly and argument out of silence.
Argh....Sorry, it was actually obvious. Yes, it was directly under what I said but far to the physical left of it, i.e. toward the left margin. This thread is getting convoluted but I should have noticed.
In Scripture demons do exactly one thing: they possess people, which then results in the victim suffering severe psychiatric and neurological impairment. Meanwhile the Devil in Scripture tempts and deceives people. There's no hint of Hell working "miracles" of any sort.
I have. Job shows the Devil betting God that Job's faith will crack under adversity. The adversity he suffers if extreme, but not at all supernatural in nature-- especially back then it was hardly unheard for people to suffer the loss of all their children (heck, in the 17th century Queen Anne of England lost every child she bore, necessitating the transfer of the crown to the German Georges when she died). Like animal plagues sometimes wiped out whole herds.
The story of Job is the story of the Devil tempting Job to lose his faith under brutal hardships.
But ALL of them are inflicted by Satan. All of them. You are implying that the physical effects are just random natural events and Satan just taunts Job from the sidelines? God gave Satan permission to attack Job. Satan did such. Many attacks were physical. Provide your Scriptural evidence that those attacks did not come from Satan.
The final problem here is that it's entirely predictable, based on 1) the design of these systems, plus 2) the vast storehouse of data they access, that AI is going to be throwing up very weird, often unsettling things. Consider all the weird, unsettling things on the whole Internet! That's the data trove these systems are pulling from.
I think the classic case is Roose's uncanny dialogue featured in the NYT. Creepy as it is, it doesn't at all mean that something from outside the system was involved. It's all comprehensible in terms of Roose's prompts and how Bing has been designed, plus the fact that Bing has "read" every bit of cheesy fan fiction and love chat on the web. This is a good rundown:
It is very very hard for us humans to avoid sensing intentionality in what looks exactly like human-generated language. But in my thinking, this is THE challenge we're going to have to meet in order not to be taken in by the assaults of this new tech. Part of that challenge will entail not seeing ghosts in the machine when others begin to worship those ghosts.
Exorcists agree that demons can infect a system, yes. But if the system's own parameters can explain what it's doing, I'd say: Don't diagnose demons. Imho.
Thing is, how will we know how to distinguish apparent intentionality from real, if the latter should ever arise? Far better, I think, to be suspicious of anything that looks like intentionality.
It's a logical position to take in theory, but it doesn't work as an approach in this case, and the reason it doesn't work is the sheer scale of the problem. Consider:
1) AI systems will often generate uncanny things by their very design.
2) These systems are only going to get more and more sophisticated at mimicking humans even as they get more subtly attuned to what humans are asking from them.
3) Hundreds of millions of people are going to be using these systems for far too much, including for ersatz companionship and as Ouija boards.
4) We *already*, even at this stage, have a serious problem not reading intentionality into AI speech.
This final point is what I keep stressing as THE main danger, and I really don't think many people out there are grasping it. It's not that AIs will be harboring demons, but that our own brokenness and tendency to read intentionality into inanimate phenomena makes us easy prey. AI is going to become immensely destructive of our spiritual health without any actual demons needed. And as you say, we won't be able to tell the difference.
In fact, this is why I simultaneously think Rod's predictions about AI as a religious force are correct, but that his claims that AI is hosting demons are not helpful. These latter claims play into the very delusions that many will embrace, and already are embracing. We need to be fighting these delusions. If you want to fight a rising "AI religion", you don't do it by diagnosing spiritual entities in the system. Especially not in a culture where half the kids think it would be cool to contact demonic entities and where you have Silicon Valley and other elites who'd delight at the prospect of presiding over a mass religious movement.
Agreed. My point is simply that while the presence of the demonic in AI isn't necessary, it's not impossible: we need to be on our guard either way. Like it or not, a new thing is here and we have to prepare to deal with it.
Yes, indeed. It’s not impossible. But just as a real exorcist needs to be able to rule out cases that are mental illness rather than actual demonic possession, a savvy interpreter of AI phenomena needs to rule out things that look strange, but are easily explained by how LLMs work. There’s going to be a lot of “mental illness” inherent to the system.
One essay that I read described it as a grasping for reality that it hasn't yet achieved, hence its many weird and bizarre results. Can't help saying that this observation struck me as very Frankenstein-like.
The other key point is for LLMs they are trained precisely to produce the most likely phrase from their prompts. What this means in practice is that the words and patterns we see repeated throughout human writing is what GPT will be trained to replicate--we are literally training models to say what humans expect.
You can try this method yourself. If I say:
"Merry _________"
And ask you to fill in the blank, what will 99% of you do? Probably respond with Christmas. Did you read my mind, or use magic to determine what I was thinking? Or maybe did the angels, in the spirit of the season, want you to give reference to Jesus?
No to all 3; you said Christmas because 99.9% of the time, those two words are uttered as a single phrase. LLMs work *precisely* the same way. They're a sign, not of demons or spirits, but just that human speech is ultimately very pattern oriented and repetitive
Yes, which is why they can seem so humanlike and also why, when one approaches arcane topics in direct dialogue with them, they will tend to generate surreal utterances. They're reaching for a grab bag of archived phrases, and that grab bag on any out-of-the-way topic will be smaller and show more eccentric variation. Ask a question about historical data and facts, and the system gives something like a standard encyclopedia entry, start discussing odd or mixed subjects, and the system will begin to sound unhinged. Or "possessed".
I HATE MATH. Math is all fine and good and useful, I’m exhausted by living in a world where it’s the only thing that matters.
I have to go away on retreat again to get away from it all.
My techy husband of almost 23 years is finally seeing the light of how destructive this attitude is. He finally sees with his own eyes the 2 humsn beings whose souls have been destroyed. But it took 23 years and 2 souls for him to get it.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, the statement by Chalyi does more than add additional evidence to support the assertion that the U.S. and the U.K. blocked any effort to bring the war to an early end. It also proves that the war itself was provoked by the U.S., notwithstanding protestations from the mainstream elite to the contrary.
Had the U.S. really supported a peaceful outcome in Ukraine, had it really believed that it was up to Ukraine to decide how to deal with the conflict, it would not have blocked what appears more and more to have been a sincere effort to stop the war. But this was not the intent or the motivation of the U.S. It had wanted this war and would therefore do everything it could, not only to provoke it, but to block any effort to stop it.
I'd go further and say that it was clear to some people even longer ago than that: people like Stephen Cohen and John Mearsheimer, for instance. The history of the conflict and its antecedents is littered with examples of bad faith and machinations engineered by the U.S., the U.K., and the E.U.: the E.U.'s insistence in 2013 that Ukraine could not maintain full economic relations with Russia*, the West's deceitful behavior over the Minsk "agreements," the U.S.'s refusal to consider Russia's proposals offered in late 2021, early 2022, and so forth.
Yep, although they can say that their strategic goal (NATO troops on the border of Russia) was reached with Finland joining NATO, which probably wouldn't have happened without the Ukraine war. Now that stationing is not as juicy as Ukrainian bases would be, but it's still very significant. NATO is, after all, and always has been, an anti-Russian alliance. It has no other actual purpose than to counter the Russians in every way possible.
I'm not saying that to defend the war-mongering the US engaged in with Ukraine for its own strategic interests, but just pointing out that the existing Atlantic security structures all presuppose the containment of Russia, and so it was to be expected that this would be the approach and policy. The only way the Russians could have avoided that was by Russia becoming basically a big version of Germany, but even that probably doesn't work because it's far too big, and would play an uncomfortably large role in the EU (even if it were, so to speak, a "normal EU country" in its national mindset, politics and so on). That's why the idea has been instead to marginalize the Russians, and, ideally at some future stage, to dismantle the existing country, which is simply too big, and remake it into smaller chunks that are separate and more manageable/palatable for the rest of Europe to deal with -- again, even assuming Russia were to become a "normal country" politically.
Basically there's no way to fit Russia into the existing structures, even if Russia weren't Putinized. It's too big.
Psychologically, Finland joining is very powerful. Don't forget the Winter War, where the Soviets failed to crush Finland. It was part of the reason Hitler thought conquering Russia would be easy...
You might be surprised. I know a few Finnish descendants who live up here, and they are a stubborn lot, who don't like to be told what to do by anyone. They are also feisty. And they still hate Russia.
I have three observations, one of which is not my own:
1. “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” - Richard Sakwa.
2. In the long term it was stupid of Finland and Sweden to decide to join NATO. Their policies of neutrality had worked well. Now, with NATO more or less installed on Finland’s border with Russia, a new possible flash point has been created. Likewise Sweden, especially given its location on the Baltic Sea.
It would also have been stupid for most of the previous members of NATO to allow in more states that would increase the risk of war rather than diminish it. It is, after all, possible for an alliance to become too large and in the process make its size an impediment to realization of its ostensible purpose. However, this “alliance” really serves to keep vassal states under U.S. control and keep the American armaments industry in business.
Your statement, that “the idea has been instead to marginalize the Russians, and, ideally at some future stage, to dismantle the existing country,” adds a great deal to the point I’m trying to make. I assume that when you state that “the existing Atlantic security structures all presuppose the containment of Russia” you mean to refer to an ostensible purpose, unless by “containment” you mean an effort intended ultimately to result in Russia’s dismemberment. Either way, your point to me at least demonstrates the stupidity of NATO enlargement.
3. There is the ridiculous mantra that any state (almost) can join NATO. I think part of the motivation to getting Finland and Sweden into NATO was to show that Russia “lost” the war. It was a way for the West to thumb its nose at Putin. But for the reasons stated above, and in your comment, and elsewhere, I think the result of Finnish and Swedish membership in NATO could end up being bad for those two countries, for the other European members of NATO, and ultimately for the U.S.
If the point was to be made that any state (almost) can join NATO, it would have been far less hazardous to admit some out of the way country like the Marshall Islands.
Admitting the former Warsaw Pact nations to NATO was a colossal mistake. With their simmering grievances and territorial disputes, they've put the original, core members of the alliance at risk. And now with newer members like North Macedonia and Montenegro, which didn't even exist on any map a few years ago, NATO is even more unstable and less cohesive. You're right, the faraway Marshall Islands would have been a better choice.
One of the strategic interests of the US is to keep Russia and China apart. Since the war in Ukraine that goal has failed miserably. From state visits to major economic agreements, Russia and China are closer than they've been in decades.
Correct. The US and UK did not want the war to end, at least not quickly. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated publicly early in the war (April '22) the US wanted Russia weakened by the Ukraine war.
Yeah, he was a recipient of "diversity hire" benefits for the entirety of his career. During my entire time in the Army post-aughts, that was his time as a senior officer. I knew of most of the general/admirals who emerged in those years, and knew personally a couple of them. I had never heard of Austin. On his very best days, he was a bureaucrat functionary, not anywhere near worthy of SecDef, or even to bear stars. He's not the first mediocrity to be elevated, sure, but an example, just like Gay, of what it looks like when a mediocrity is put into an important post for reasons that have nothing to do with personal merit.
No one I knew in the service knew who he was. I had one colleague tell me, "Austin was a great pick for that posting. He has the support of the troops." I said, "Really? Which ones? Because of what?" He could not answer.
Regarding keeping Trump off the ballot, et cetera (i.e., making it almost impossible for RFK, jr., to run in the Democratic primaries):
We used to have some bedrock principles in this country that public officials as well as ordinary citizens believed in, at least superficially: the freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to due process. All of that, and more, seems to have been run through the shredder. What many of us thought was sacrosanct, is no longer.
The U.S. doesn't have a common religion or some other cultural glue that binds us together. Without those bedrock principles, what is there to hold it all together? This is why these efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, to keep Marianne Williamson and RFK, jr., from challenging Biden, are manifestations of the loss of a common understanding of purpose, the result of deliberate efforts.
Hasn't it struck you that all these state-level challenges to Trump's appearing on the ballot are all taking the insurrection angle? There are stories on X that these are all Soros-funded, which is more than plausible, but if they're not they're all coming from one source.
Same with Liz Cheney and the neo-cons -- funny how the left-leaners in the establishment media have discovered a new found love for them. Did you see the "disagreement" between Cheney and Colbert when she was on his show recently? They both agree that Trumpism is "fascist," but disagreed over whether that was a general GOP tendency that DT capitalized on (Colbert) or was strictly a MAGA thing (Cheney). Which proves they are both nitwits.
Liz Cheney is a very bitter woman, so bitter that she doesn't think logically any longer. She not only expected to be a senator from Wyoming, she thought that she was presidential. Her political career is now in ruins. History has passed her by. Further, as a Cheney, she is very sheltered and removed from ordinary Americans.
It was inevitable that Soros would take his Color Revolution playbook to America. The one major power center that the Davos class doesn't own and control is the American polity and the ability of Americans to dash all their plans through the ballot...that is why they need to transform democracy into Our Democracy™, so the peasant class can never interfere with their plans again.
There is simply no point having all that money and power if a few million Deplorables in a few flyover states can challenge it...that's why this threat needs to be neutralized.
And one of their ongoing sources of anger and frustration, and also showing the unique character of this nation, is that despite their best efforts, we have been surprisingly resilient and resistant to them. That they indeed cannot just buy their way.
Hence the efforts to get rid of the Electoral College, which would mean coastal elite rule in perpetuity. Or as Gary North used to put it, "One man, one vote, one time."
Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution explains that the States have the primary authority over election administration, the “times, places, and manner of holding elections”. They can decide who gets on the ballot and who doesn’t, based on state laws and the United States Constitution. And a lot of people have been kept off of a lot of ballots over the years:
Meanwhile, to everyone deeply concerned about state-level challenges to Trump's appearing on the ballot, I would remind you of the slate of fake electors - which I find much more shattering to our bedrock principles and cultural glue - through which President Trump and his allies attempted to hold onto power:
"when Trump could not persuade state officials to illegally swing the election in his favor, he and his Republican allies began recruiting a slate of fake electors in seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to sign certificates falsely stating that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, had won their states."
95% of all op-ed writers are "on staff" of any site/magazine/newspaper. And most try to have one or two of the "opposite" side on so they can generate a nice "Crossfire" vibe. Thus Michael Novak on PBS, etc.
No one (no one in possession of the facts and a working brain) is saying that unfairly targeting Trump disculpates him. But even the editorial boards of the WaPo and the New York Times, and Ruthie Marcus think this is a stupid idea. It's also sinister.
Yes. Law and order until you don't like the laws. I've heard that one a lot over my many decades... and from EVERY side, including some you may never have dreamed of.
It is not a matter just of whether you like the law or not. There IS concrete actual right and wrong, and it does not come from Man. The very basis of law, our Constitution, was established on that understanding. Money, or force of arms, does not change that.
What needs to happen is exactly what will happen (we hope): that SCOTUS will finally rule on what the states can and cannot do about elections, specifically define Section 3 of Article 1, which has never been done. Then again, SCOTUS might just punt it.
Very troublesome if true. But then I always wonder why the Podhorzer "Shadow Campaign" gets a pass. The fact that something so obviously conspiratorial gets ignored by BOTH parties is in itself quite telling. All this fraud, missing ballots, fake electors, gerrymandering stuff is a huge "Look over there!" away from what really happened in 2020: the capture of the election "machine" by a cross-party cabal of tech, media, corporate, and political elites under the guise of "ensuring safe and fair elections." Foundationally, this is far more fascist than MAGA is on its worst day.
I took a look at the POGO piece. I didn’t know what POGO was until now. My conclusion is that there is less in that “report” than meets the eye.
But first, this: The issue is Due Process. Not whether Trump has behaved badly. In the same way the issue when the ACLU (the old one, not the group masquerading as such currently) defended the right of Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois, was the defense of freedom of expression, not the defense of Nazi ideology. So, to criticize the Colorado Supreme Court or the Secretary of State of Maine is not to praise Trump but to condemn the evisceration of fundamental principles that undergird the American political experiment.
The POGO article surprised me. I expected something more sophisticated, but instead it became obvious that it is based on a make weight argument. Here are three illustrations.
1
“All three branches of government have called the attack on the Capitol an insurrection.” The link* is to a House Resolution, No. 24, resolving to impeach Trump in connection with what he allegedly did in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. Yet nothing in the resolution provides any support for POGO’s statement that “[a]ll three branches of government” called the “attack” an insurrection. If I’m wrong about that, please show me.
Moreover, the linked document shows that the Senate determined, on a vote of 57 to 43, that Trump was “not guilty as charged.” Since the Legislative branch of the federal government is made up of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, to say that this branch has “called the attack” an insurrection is simply incorrect, since one of the two house of the Legislature found Trump “not guilty.”
2
The second illustration I offer is the reference by POGO to the decision in a case involving Abdul Hassan to exclude a naturalized citizen from running for President, an office which the Constitution provides can only be held by a native born citizen. But significantly, Hassan participated in the litigation. The court’s conclusion, that Hasan was barred notwithstanding the Fourteenth Amendment, came as a result of litigation in which Hasan participated.**
The Hassan case calls to mind the suggestions, made I believe by Trump himself, among others, that Obama was not a native born citizen and was thus ineligible to hold office as President. Had some administrative officer determined that Obama’s name could not appear on the ballot, one would expect, in a nation of laws, that a judicial determination would require litigation in which Obama would be a participant.
3
Many of the “facts” on which the POGO report purports to rely are simply a recounting of allegations, recommendations, and other, in some cases obviously politically motivated, statements of one sort or another. But none of these support judicial action to remove someone from the ballot who has not participated in the litigation.
Granted, secretaries of state have the responsibility to determine whether a person satisfies the requirements for being a candidate, such as age, citizenship, birth, criminal history, and so forth. However, in such cases the affected person has a right to respond in a judicial setting. Even the POGO report implicitly acknowledges this point with regard to the matter of Nicholas Kristof. The Oregon Secretary of State determined that Kristof did not meet the state’s residency requirement. If you follow the link provided by POGO you will see that in the letter stating that determination, the Secretary of State noted that Kristof had the right to “file an appeal to the appropriate circuit court.” *** Thus, Kristof, like Hassan, had the right to initiate litigation to challenge the Secretary of State’s determination.
By contrast, the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision came in a case in which Trump apparently was not a participant. In addition, in all of the cases, including Colorado and Maine, in which efforts are being made to disqualify him from candidacy based on January 6, reliance is placed on implied “findings” that are not the result of any due process. That is the problem here.
(As for the rest of your comment, the fact that Trump may have behaved badly in other respects has nothing to do with whether the court in Colorado made a decision in a case in which Trump was afforded his due process rights.)
Those were not fake electors. Trump made the argument (convincingly I might add) that he won those states fairly. His electors were then part of the legal challenge to Biden.
A more appropriate term would be to say that both Trump and Biden's electors were contested, but the newspaper assumed Biden was the victor without taking the matter to court
Every legal challenge (62 in all) that Trump filed was rejected by the various courts, including state and federal courts, and many of the judges who ruled on it were Trump appointees.
And the attempt by Texas AG Ken Paxton to sue Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin election results, filed with SCOTUS, was rejected by SCOTUS.
Check the math: Ukrainian war deaths are well above 300,000, not 30,000. Well over half a million wounded. They lost 125,000 since the summer “offensive” alone for immeasurable gain. I wish none of this happened, but with Frau Genocide, Sgt Scholtz, Jenny Dapper Doltenberg, Jake the Snake, Viktoria von Nuland, The Sniffer, BoJo mad hair, and Raytheon Austin, et al at the helm, was expected.
Back in October 2022, Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president and noted war monger, said in a speech that 100K Ukrainian "officers" had already been killed. She's not the brightest person in Brussels but surely had access to accurate numbers as opposed to the propaganda emanating from Kiev.
“Pope Francis made a very foolish administrative mistake in promulgating his same-sex blessing policy … What is he going to do to the national bishops’ conferences who openly refuse to obey him here? These are bishops from the most faithfully believing Catholic countries (particularly those in Africa) — the ones most inclined to respect and obey papal authority. Francis has blundered away the mystique of papal power.”
That these African bishops are from “the most faithfully believing Catholic countries”—it’s exactly this that lands them on the current pope’s Unimportant List. I think we’ve seen more than enough to finally *get* this pope. He introduced himself as pope of the poor and marginalized as against, say, “arrogant American right-wing Catholics”, yet at the end of the day, look, he’s precisely the pope of Arrogant America. His papal authority has been put in service of every single elite initiative, from climate hysteria, to the demand for open borders in Europe and the US, to bowing to COVID authoritarianism, and now to aping first-world notions of “marginal” by codifying the concerns of Fr. James Martin in a DDF document.
In short, people really on the margins (millions of faithful African Catholics, say) are not on this pope’s radar. But if one can find “victims” or causes precious to US coastal elites, just watch him jump! There he is, ready to get a photo op as one of the “virtuous”.
Remember that Father Martin extends his concern all the way to TQ+, and that Gregory has said "trans people" are close to the heart of the Church. Francis had a problem on his hands and this is how he solves it.
Yup. All people are close to the heart of the Church, of course. But that doesn't mean the Church's heart allows it to subscribe to every ideological claim anyone wants to make. For this pope, however, it's western secular ideologies that are given priority.
The degree to which this has become the center for FrancisChurch was finally cemented for me by the grotesque Synod and Synodality.
Yes, Ukraine has suffered big losses. So did Poland in WWII-- proportionally more than Russia did. Should Poland have just rolled over for the Hitler and Stalin? Should nations just welcome invaders?
Sometimes one can get the feeling in this space that Russia is a mindless force of nature and no blame can be cast on it for this bloodbath. Reminds me a bit of the way some leftists refuse to denounce black criminals since they are "victims" of racism, poverty etc., and can't help but be murderous thugs.
Russia is not blameless but let's dispense with the notion - so prevalent in the mainstream mindset - that this war is *entirely* the fault of Russia, which was completely unprovoked, and Putin is probably crazy too.
The war is the fault of Russia. Putin and his toadies were perfectly free to reject the option of war, just as a thug in West Baltimore is perfectly free not to grab a gun and blow his rivals away. Claiming otherwise in either case is morally obtuse.
Ukrainian nationalists began shelling the breakaway Donbas oblasts in 2014, resulting in the deaths of 14,000, many of them civilians. In late 2021, early 2022, there were signs that Ukraine was poised to launch a major offensive to reclaim Donbas. Were the evil Ruskies provoked?
Putin is responsible for the war to the same extent that the U.S. was "responsible" for the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In what world was Putin not supposed to react to the expansion of NATO to his very doorstep? In what world does a great power not respond forcefully to such a provocation? From the Russian standpoint, and no it's not some moral failing to attempt to see things through different eyes, Putin had to act. He did. We knew he would - that was a feature and not a bug. We wanted to provoke him and we did. Washington got the war it wanted. Both Ukraine and Russia got a lot more dead than they would have otherwise had had the war been concluded early. But Washington wasn't having that.
Re: In what world was Putin not supposed to react to the expansion of NATO to his very doorstep?
NATO was already on Russia's doorstep: see: the Baltics. And Poland. Was that a good idea? No (though I can see why Poland wanted in NATO). But Russia did not invade its neighbors over it. And now Finland is in NATO, and Sweden soon will be, albeit someone has to sweeten Orban's pot enough for him to drop the drama queen act about Sweden (which I don't understand anyway). Way to score own goals, Putin! Meanwhile Ukraine was not a candidate for NATO membership. No, this war is all Russia's doing, period, every bit as much as the Iraq War of 2003 and following was the doing of the US, even though Saddam Hussein was a real bastard and 9-11 an atrocity.
You're basically saying Putin would have been justified in invading the Baltics or Poland.
Again: Putin is responsible for the war in Ukraine to the extent the US was responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or perhaps you think we would have permitted Soviet missles in central America, or perhaps Mexico?
Yeah, it's pretty damn obvious that we were poking the bear for almost 10 years then crapped our pants when said bear responded in an unexpected and untoward manner. Some people can't seem to tell the difference between explanation and justification.
This is the question that the Surrender Caucus won’t answer: what exactly should Ukraine have done after the Russians invaded? Rolled over? Given up? We already know how that story ends - Holodomor.
WOW! That's a bold statement. Do you believe Putin can rightfully take back the 14 countries listed below that left the Soviet Union since 1991?
Edit to Add:
Where would you draw the line on when a country becomes a "real country"? Should Mexico take back the SW United States? Should the UK take back the US colonies? You get the point.....a large portion of world would change, assuming it's possible to actually determine what countries are "real".
I don't frequently agree with Bill Maher's views but his latest New Rules episode discusses this issue in an interesting and entertaining manner (although focused on Israel & Palestine). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-CRXROorw&t
Putin's having a hard enough time taking the parts of Ukraine with Russian demographic majorities. For Russia, the war is an embarrassment for Putin. Russia looks weak. Fifteen years from now, Putin will be dead or on his last legs. America should plan for a post-Putin Russia now.
Russia may look week from the West's perspective, but actually the multiple sanctions imposed on her has made her stronger and self-sufficient. Russia has a strong physical economy and can endure anything that's thrown at her. We had are monopolar moment, unfortunately we did not use it wisely for the good of other countries in the world. The unconstitutional behavior manifested in the Iraq War and regime change foreign policy have left destruction in it's wake and a bitter aftertaste. Growing up in an anti-Communist family environment, I had hoped the monopolar moment would be the panacea for humanity around the world after the end of the Cold War, but it was squandered. I haven't given up on America and never will, but I'm more skeptical because the current political suprastructres and bureaucracies make it practically impossible to effect change regardless who we elect from our political duopoly. The Benedict Option looks better with each passing year.
I have a number of Ukrainian friends & I assure you that Ukraine IS a real country. It has its own language, which is similar to Russian but not the same. It has its own culture & history. There’s also the matter of the Holodomor, which would explain why Ukraine is not thrilled about claims it should be returned to Russia. Should Mexico take Texas, New Mexico, Colorado & Utah back? Should China be able to take over Taiwan?
No. Ukraine had to fight. And I honor their self-respect as a country. But I am an American. America's policy toward Russia and Ukraine has been spectacularly flawed since 1991. Our policy could have prevented Russia's war against Ukraine. George Kennan was right regarding post 1991 Russia.
To the entities in question, there is no such thing as "closed system", not in material world terms. No code, security, lock or barrier can keep them out. Only permissions, granted to them by God, or us, allow them access. And only denying them permissions, or taking authority in Jesus's name, actively denies or expells them. It is quite possible what happened is what you say happened, Rod.
As regards Caldwell’s essay, how can a very long form essay in “the premier journal of religion and public life” give a diagnosis of the 1990s but fail even to mention religion? Never mind Fr Neuhaus. (One fears that pot shots at James Buchanan and George Gilder now count as “religion.”)
"...how can a very long form essay in “the premier journal of religion and public life” give a diagnosis of the 1990s but fail even to mention religion?"
Nah, it's not an implicit "or." Journal titles or descriptions don't work that way. After all, first things are things that are also first. So I guess any essay on "things" will do?
On second thought, I came to think that Caldwell's essay may have been commissioned by RR wanting rethink the line that FT had been promoting, that our current "nemesis" (Rod's term) originated in the "libertarianism" of the Reagan years. What about a piece looking at the mischief of the next decade, then? That's a useful proposal, I think.
Christopher Caldwell is almost never wrong and he's once again correct. After the USSR and World Communism gave it all up, America became hubristic and arrogant. Our easy victory over Iraq in the first war has contributed to the arrogance. Like Cody Jarrett(Jimmy Cagney) in "White Heat", we were "on top of the world." If America could rewind the last thirty-five years like an old VCR tape, I bet we'd do a few things differently.
Further, the economic boom that began in 1983 and has been ongoing but for two very short recessions and one recession that was deeper and longer, has encouraged massive immigration from Third World nations who have no feel for America's culture or history. Economism became the rage in America, especially amongst "conservative" thinkers. The massive immigration radically altered the demographics of America and led to the decline of the Republican Party.
Everybody is saying the current decline is "sudden". We are the same distance from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait as the fall of Saigon was from Pearl Harbor.
"If America could rewind the last thirty-five years like an old VCR tape, I bet we'd do a few things differently"
But that's the problem - we wouldn't. We'd fully expect things would turn out differently/better because that, right there, is the American mindset: Let's never learn from our mistakes, and instead insist that any bad outcomes where THEMSELVES mistakes.
Speaking of Christopher Caldwell. I've cited below a 9/22 article by Caldwell which is as far as I've read, the single best analysis of America's Ukraine fiasco and the dangers of America's self destructive foreign policy that I've ever come across. It's a lengthy article and for those of you who are truly interested in the potential disasters that we American face because of our foreign policy, I would suggest you read it slowly and carefully. Not only is the article on the money but is is beautifully written. I'd especially recommend that Rod read it. He might learn something about which he writes so frequently.
It's a wonderfully written article, far better written and far more on the money than the Caldwell article cited by Rod. I'm sure Rod will not have read the article which is too bad because he would benefit from Caldwell's incite. Glad you enjoyed it.
About the exclusions of Trump from ballots, there's nothing in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment requiring conviction of insurrection.
Which is more “banana republic:” kicking Trump off the ballot only after he emerges as the frontrunner or not kicking him off the ballot, despite the Constitution, because he is a frontrunner and his followers disproportionately own guns?
I see this situation as tragic (a fatal flaw approaching its malign telos), with Colorado and Maine playing their ordained parts.
It seems fair that Ukraine becomes part of the European Union and receives massive funding from the European Union to rebuild Ukraine. After all, Ukraine was devastated by the Ukraine-Russian war, a war NATO, essentially the European Union's military arm, encouraged. There is a moral obligation on the part of the European Union.
I disagree with Caldwell that the root of American hubris was in the 1990s - I argue that it was in the late 1940s and 1950s, when most of the rest of the world was rubble after WW2 except America, and we had the factories, the money, and the power to do anything we wanted to do. What confirms this for me is the number of people I STILL hear saying, "we need to go back to the 1950s". My response is always, "you can't have that monopoly on power, money, and commerce without the world war before it - so you really want a World War 3? Because we might not be the winners this time, you know." But they can't believe it. "American exceptionalism" and all that.
I do agree with Caldwell's, "America’s discovery of world dominance might turn out in the 21st century to be what Spain’s discovery of gold had been in the 16th — a source of destabilization and decline disguised as a windfall."
American exceptionalism only works when compared with traditional American wisdom, restraint and humility. When it becomes just the American version of sniffing one's own farts, we get what we get. And unfortunately, it costs us blood and treasure.
Well, we were finding our way in the Cold War, a mixed bag, but overall successful, strategically speaking, even masterfully so. With even highs of restraint (how the Korean War concluded), and the Cuban Missle Crisis and lows, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs. How we came out of it ranged from restraint of older, wiser generations (George Bush, Desert Storm), to boomers who still listened to wise voices (most of Bill Clinton's foreign policy was good) to when things started falling apart (Dubya, Obama). Trump tried putting sensible restraints back in, and was successful, but that got derailed by Biden's election. And now, we are here.
Valid point. The victory in World War Two led to hubris on the foreign policy front but also on the domestic. The World War Two generation- God bless them- believed that any problem could be solved by the American government. They proved incorrect.
I don't know about more savage, but America has become much more greedy and selfish. Americans expect cheap food and exotic vacations and endless entertainment.
I agree. I expect in much of America, there will be housing and land bargains about four years from now.
Howard, my Florida homeowner insurance doubled over the course of the past few years. Expecting it to keep rising as DeSantis and the Legislative have done basically nothing and seem to have no clue how this could affect the Florida housing market, one of the biggest economic drivers in the state.
We're obviously on the road to another housing collapse and a resultant recession or worse. But yes, the banks are showing how virtuous they are by providing high interest-rate loans to minorities so they can buy grossly overpriced homes. It just shows how ethical and "anti-racist" everyone is! And if you bring up any of these concerns, surely it's because you're racist and don't want blacks to have nice houses.
And if you mention anything AFTER the crash occurs, those same actors will insist your racism was... somehow... a cause of the crash. Because you didn't believe fervently enough.
I know a bit about the principles behind chatgpt, and I believe that demons exist. I don't think demons made chatgpt output that image - or rather probably not by circumventing it's normal operation. It all depends what is fed into it, including the whole history of interaction the person had.
On a more technical side, basic chatgpt doesn't spontaneously generate images. Some time ago, when I was experimenting with it, it didn't directly generate images at all, only computer code that could generate images. So, in terms of anomalies, I would start from that: is that person running a version of chatgpt that would normally output any images at all? Maybe he has some kind of premium account or pkugins enabled etc.
So first it should be established whether getting an image at all is an anomaly. I took a quick look at the Twitter thread, it doesn't seem to suggest that, rather it focuses on the content of the image.
Now, for a normie liberal bot that generates images, there is nothing shocking or unexpected about the image itself. Probably it did take the Transfiguration icon as inspiration, and it gave it a normie liberal sciency spin.
Or, the programmers put some Easter eggs in there, nudging the system to return things like that at certain times. Wouldn't be surprised.
In the end there is some "devil's work" involved, but I would think that most of it is in the mind of the people controlling chatgpt.
Of course the steamrolling of everything is illegal... And it finally caught up with heretofore pillars of the current order... The lawsuit is a good development, but this attitude that "the internet supersedes everything" has been very harmful and not really lawful (cf privacy issues, predatory marketing, deliberate addictive design etc).
I guess my point is that even if nyt wins their lawsuit, and even if this is widely used as precedent, it doesn't automatically make me feel that it's "problem solved"...
I think with the NYT, it's less about the computers training on the material, but ChatGPT is spitting out blocks of text that are basically exactly what the NYT wrote in the first place. There's a fine line here; there is no copyright allowable on facts, or stating them, but there is copyright on anything beyond that. (In which case, the NYT should have a slam-dunk case, being as their 'facts' are mostly opinion, yes? *snark*)
I have a couple of writer friends whose books have been used to "train" AI, using pirated e-book versions of their work. They're waiting to see what happens with an Authors Guild lawsuit filed by several big names, because it will have implications for other writers who aren't named but are part of the class.
I hope these AI tech douchebags get their asses handed to them. There's something unspeakably lazy—and hardly innovative—about them taking other people's work for free and pocketing billions.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why we are even doing this stuff. It’s only to feed the egos of the techy people. It’s like we live in ‘Revenge of the Nerds’, but on steroids. It’s pure hubris.
I hear ya, sister. I've seen arguments for using AI—which is really just extremely fast, comprehensive computing—in a number of fields, carefully and responsibly, but unleashing it into the wider world just for the fun of it was deeply, criminally reckless.
It’s frightening that I have to question everything my son does in school. It’s scary to not be able to be confident in knowing his voice and then you’re told you’re dumb for questioning the wisdom.
Agreed. I don't I believe the Tweet. ChatGPT doesn't "spontaneously" generate anything. It requires a prompt from the user of some kind.
Dear Rod Dreher: Math is important.
Please consider "the odds". AI programs probably generate millions of images a day, and have probably generated billions. "The odds" are that some would look demonic. This is not proof of an evil spirit that speaks through AI. This does not mean it is likely one does.
Now, considering spirits, that is not in the domain of mathematics. But your newsletter often seems to imply that demons can do things nearly without limit. If they could, I think they would have done so already. Perhaps they would have gone into computers and messed up the nuclear launch codes. If they could speak through computers, I think they do not need AI in order to do so. If they were without limits, we would no be here, humanity would be long gone.
Back to a math-related field, computer programming, AI is code. When you think demons cause something to appear, you are saying they went in and altered the code, or caused the code not to work, or something like that. AI is not thoughts in the way humans experience thoughts, it is code.
But how can you explain the befuddlement of Mr Dreher's former subscribers and their inability to cancel their subscriptions if you don't take into account some sort of demonic possession of the internet?
Humor is a great way to deal with life. Thanks.
Re: But your newsletter often seems to imply that demons can do things nearly without limit.
Yes, this is one of my biggest complaints with Rod's demonologiy. He promotes these entities to the status and powers of gods, which puts us well outside of Christian orthodoxy-- something which the early medieval Church condemned when people back then got too superstitious about demons and witchcraft. Demons are created being just like we are. They must obey, and cannot set aside, the laws of nature just as we must. Like us they may have "technologies" which can harness nature in unexpected ways-- perhaps in ways we cannot understand-- and they may have abilities which we lack. But they are not omnipotent, and a "demons of the gaps" theory is no more reputable than a "god of gaps" is.
Actually, you do that, Jon. Rod has never given the entities in question "godlike" powers. He only credits them with what Scripture and the experience of those who have dealt with them tell us they have. Demons and angels may be "created" but that does not subject them to human understanding, limits or abilities. The idea that they must have "technologies" is theology according to Jon, not backed by any authority you could name. Just your own preconceptions.
Yes, but I'd say that while Christianity would hold that denying any demon power is deception, it is also deception to see them in any wrong/evil or potential wrong/evil. As you know, some evil is from human free will, and some from "nature" e.g., tidal waves.
I see Rod as an important man for this world. He is opposing communism/socialism, e.g., far left totalitarianism. He is a "main voice" doing that. As you know, there is a movie coming out from "Live Not By Lies".
I think it is possible Rod is under additional stress because of the great good he does and can do. I also think saying demons appear from outer space or on the internet - Rod seems to say this is probable though not certain - could be a way "the enemy" wants to take him down. Over-ascribing demonic action will make Rod look less credible.
PS - Yes, we can't categorically say demons "can't" speak through computers. Yes, weird things happen with Ouija boards. But if demons are doing it, that because the minds of those with the pointer were effected. My point that "if demons had powers over computers they would have directly manipulated them already" seems valid to me. (You could reply that you think they have done so, but I don't think it is direct, I think it is free will doing evil, posting evil images, etc that results in evil through computers before AI, and computers randomly accessing this after AI.)
I think it is both. Both affecting the minds of the users AND being able to affect the physical world. Because accounts clearly show both. But the latter is more limited and again, requires permissions being granted first. The mental ones do, too, but those are easier to get. Mainly, because humans take that realm less seriously, and have the ability to deny it as "my mind playing tricks on me." When it happens in meatspace, it becomes harder to deny, at least for those who were there, at least for a time. With the passage of time, without reinforcement, humans can rationalize that, too.
On both mental and physical, yes - but we don't think they write code. If they did, much more mischief would likely have been done by this point. I also think that fourth dimensional beings, if they exist, have to be demons, but of that is an opinion, not something I can prove. But I think it is a logic error to think they "must" be demons and also a logic error to think they are "likely" demons. Mystery and evil should not be presumed to be "likely directly demon-caused". Look to ourselves and to "nature" as well as the possibility of demons.
Ultimately, does it matter if the demons are influencing AI directly or indirectly? What is the fruit? The point is not so much about the exact nature of the origins but rather about what is being produced. If you take Dostoevsky's understanding of demons as ideas, what ideas are behind the digital revolution and AI? One can be profoundly critical of all this stuff without necessarily invoking the supernatural at all. See Barba-Kay's 'A Web of Our Own Making."
I absolutely agree. But Rod is talking about an existing entity with a personality, etc. that exists in the spirit world, not an idea. I like and respect Rod so much but I don't want people to start putting him in something approaching the David Icke category (lizard DNA from fourth dimensional lizards who do great evil). He is not there now, but people could, wrongly, do that.
I think putting something forth as "likely to be true" in the spirit world, without the Bible or church leaders talking about it, is not a good idea, especially something that will be seen as so weird. It can drown Rod's important message about the real dangers of the real totalitarian far left. And yes, I think perhaps "Dostoevskian" forces would find something who can to the good Rod does a target,
Richard Gallagher in his Demonic Foes cites a rather unusual case of possession. He is a psychiatrist who was brought into such cases at an early stage to willow out the majority of cases that were only mental illness. In this case the demon(s) caused a car to stall on a dark country road and even invaded a phone conversation that Gallagher and the priest were having and told them off! Before I read that book I thought that the demonic was likely not capable of invading phones (or computers), but that doubt has been put to rest in my mind.
Interesting. I'll have a look at the book. But could you say what Gallagher's proof was that demons caused the car to stall? And in what way did they invade a conversation, e.g., could their voice be heard, according to Gallagher and if so, how did he know?
And underdescribing would play right into their hands. These two quotes come to mind...
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire
“The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy”—Ken Ammi”
The first one is self-explanatory and obvious. The second one, all you need to do is check out the media recasting Satan as heroic, noble, misunderstood. Heck, just the modern "Church of Satan", which denies any involvement or even belief in Satan, yet feel it necessary to call themselves that, incorporate occult rituals and ceremonies into their doings, etc.
Then you see all the open and blatant demonic displays among the more decadent corners of culture, and it becomes hiding in plain sight.
Is anyone here pretending the Devil doesn't exist? I am just insisting on rhe very small o Orthodox position that the Devil is not some sort of junior god.
And literally no one here is saying he is. No one. You keep coming up with this idea that Rod and others here are. But only you use that terminology or assign that authority or power level.
It is odd that you try to take cover behind Orthodoxy as A. Rod is Orthodox and B. the Orthodox have exorcists and C. I do not know much about Orthodox theology specifically, but I doubt they have a hard and fast rule about demons and/or angels having a lack of ability to affect the physical world.
Well, it was written that the gods of the heathen are devils, wasn't it, somewhere?
Yes, but I am sure we also agree while "believing they don't exist" is a problem, believing they cause all evil and all mystery is a problem. I don't say Rod is claiming "all" but I say it is possible he is over-ascribing. I did not say "for sure - he is". I think he should reconsider, however, in light of the idea of deception going both ways - failing to see demons or seeing possible demons that are not there.
Considering the totality of his content, and considering the relatively few non-crackpot types even addressing this, I would say he has the balance. The only people complaining are those who consider such talk at all embarrassing, unsightly or ruffling of their preconceptions or own world views.
It's not just in the "Church of Satan". Steve Bannon gave an interview in which the filmmaker said, “My wife had mentioned to me that, you know, ‘Bannon is a little bit like Lucifer in ‘Paradise Lost,’ and I mentioned this to him. I said, ‘You know, that Lucifer character — aka Satan — reminds me of you!’" And Bannon embraced the idea.
Of course, Bannon also once said ""Darkness is good. Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."
https://apnews.com/article/2e3988451f9f4ccd844658d6a4ea2221
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747/
It would not surprise me that the NeoCons and NeoCon policy is informed by this "We make our own reality" stuff. Where power, and the idolization of it is, expect spiritual evil to be lurking.
Same with the Left and now throwing around "Rest In Power" when someone they care about croaks. Same thing, "power" being the ultimate objective and its existence, and your belief you control it, justifying whatever you wish it to justify.
I needed to check on that and did. The context was Trump, things like the 2016 election and subsequent remarks. Trump's rude (to say the least) remarks. Bannon says they helped Trump. Some of Trump's remarks could be called dark, some could think Trump is like Satan. The media is getting it wrong (to say it will bring evil, that is racist) but that helps us because people like Trump's rudeness.
I am no Bannon fan but I think that is probably a fair summary of what Bannon says, in context.
(The first article was just some left wing person claiming Bannon liked to be identified with Satan, or with Lucifer in Paradise Lost, with no context or quote, so no evidence there.)
I agree that over-ascription would be a problem, but it seems to me that Rod usually throws the more tenuous stuff out there with a "what if...?" He could perhaps be more explicit in this at times, but that's not the same as over-ascription.
Note that I'm speaking as one who has years of experience with this type of thing, as my parents were Charismatic/Pentecostal "deliverance ministers." Trust me, I know over-ascription when I see it, as my father and I had quite a few disagreements over it.
Agreed. And I come from my own experiences, that from being a paranormal enthusiast and dabbler, and also having taught my own spiritual warfare course in a small group.
It absolutely pays to be cautious, but I see absolutely nothing incautioius about Rod's approach here. And it seems to me that those who object would really rather him not talk about it at all and would rather not consider the subject or the possibilities.
Yes -- given the nature of the thing no one can perfectly walk the fine line between under- and over-ascription.
That is so interesting about your Charismatic/Pentecostal background. It is mine as well, though I am no longer part of it.
On Rod, I read him as believing it is not certain, but there is a good likelihood demons speak through AI (and Ouija). Also that it is quite probable (not certain) that UFO aliens are demons. Yes, he does hedge, as in today's "What do you all thing?"...you know how I am, I'm interested in what some say....
Taking just a few minutes, I went back to the first "demons through computers" post - the one on Ouija similar to AI. Rod says:
""High tech Ouija board, for sure". "There is a reason the foundations of modern science are in alchemy" (In context, he did not hedge these words where they appear.)
Regarding on person "He doesn’t seem to factor in the possibility that it could be a kind of non-material zombie through which higher intelligences (demons) are communicating." I read this as "it is an important possibility, not at all unlikely"...otherwise why discuss it at length.
Rod often says things like "but yes, that’s pretty much what Simone (and many others in that field) are talking about: that AI is a vector that allows for the exchange of information with discarnate higher beings" - - His tone is one of approval for the person who said it. He casts no doubt upon it, though he does not say it is certainly right.
PS: I think we agree on Rod. I like him (just paid my one year subscription) and respect him. I agree that he hedges on the "demon stuff". But his belief seems to come down to "I think it likely, though not certain". I think that is enough to damage his reputation at a time when he I hope he will be received credibly regarding totalitarianism. It just hurts to see it, because one of my two main purposes in life (with all my travels and even living in Eastern Europe) is opposing far-left indoctrination and seeing those beliefs enacted politically.
The other thing is that the format of a Substack blog is even different from the AC column - it's a much smaller, paying, audience. He's afforded the "luxury" of being a little more "out there" if he feels like he's bouncing thoughts off a smaller community.
Where in Scripture do demons possess computer code?
What Scripture says they cannot? Or need it to affect computer systems? The Bible is not the freaking Monster Manual and we are not playing Dungeons and Dragons here. They can affect the material world in all kinds of ways. To say that code is somehow beyond them, or that they are dependent on having to manipulate it specifically is ridiculous.
"You do not need God. You can be a god yourself."
I think think the point is that God told us about anything important that was around when the Bible was written. The Bible does not directly say "don't try to change your gender" but it lays down principles. It also seems to lay down principles for the demonic. Can you name an instance in the Bible of demons working directly with physical matter, rather than through influencing minds? (Demons, not Satan himself.)
Demons would have to work with matter or physical energy (e.g., electricity) to speak directly through AI.
But yeah, when I first asked AI a question and its response included "gender is a construction of the mind" Christians could say "demons" were "speaking", just not directly. The difference is important.
"He made them, male and female." It is notable that "changing your gender" is scientifically impossible. The fact that we can only castrate people, surgically, chemically, is telling. The fact that we are doing it to children, and there is a loud, insane faction pushing this, hsa the footprints of the demonic all over it. Again, there is a reason Jesus spoke much of the protection of children and issued some of his direst sanctions against those who would harm them.
As for demons affecting physical reality, read the book of Job. Loaded with it. And thats for starters. From diseases, flames, to windstorms, etc, all kinds of physical manifestations.
Also, you cannot discount the experiences of exorcists, who report various physical effects, from the ones mentioned here, to physical objects manifesting, etc.
One last thing, the idea that the Bible presents a comprehensive spreadsheet of their capabilities, ie the Monster Manual reference I used earlier, is itself not Biblical. The Bible just shows some instances, but certainly not all, ever and ever, amen. Such a thing would be impossible for a single book. It makes it clear they are powerful, their abilities are varied, they are more powerful than we are, but are limited in their scope of action. They are stuck within the limitations God has placed them and they also cannot take actions in regard to us, in many cases, without us given them clearance as well.
As I said, it is rarer then mental manifestations, so it is with the Bible. But it is undeniably in Scripture. God has given Satan and his minions domain over the Earth, within limits, with a limited timespan. And Scripture also says, as the time grows short, God will begin retracting HIs restraints on the world even further, and evil will become more blatant and brazen in its activities.
Some say we are already starting to see that.
Let he who has ears, let them hear.
Argumentum ex silentio
Me? I stated Christians (who believe "in the Bible") believe something like "if it was important God would have told us about it or at least laid down principles about it". Accepting that premise, then - -
If we agree (and not everyone does) that demons doing physical activity is not in the Bible (but happens), then we must agree either (a) God left that out of the Bible though it is important; or (b) although it may happen, it is not important. - That is hardly and argument out of silence.
Not you Linda - my comment was directed specifically, and narrowly, to JonF's query, "Where in Scripture do demons possess computer code?"
Argh....Sorry, it was actually obvious. Yes, it was directly under what I said but far to the physical left of it, i.e. toward the left margin. This thread is getting convoluted but I should have noticed.
In Scripture demons do exactly one thing: they possess people, which then results in the victim suffering severe psychiatric and neurological impairment. Meanwhile the Devil in Scripture tempts and deceives people. There's no hint of Hell working "miracles" of any sort.
Incorrect. Read Job. Read exorcist accounts.
I have. Job shows the Devil betting God that Job's faith will crack under adversity. The adversity he suffers if extreme, but not at all supernatural in nature-- especially back then it was hardly unheard for people to suffer the loss of all their children (heck, in the 17th century Queen Anne of England lost every child she bore, necessitating the transfer of the crown to the German Georges when she died). Like animal plagues sometimes wiped out whole herds.
The story of Job is the story of the Devil tempting Job to lose his faith under brutal hardships.
But ALL of them are inflicted by Satan. All of them. You are implying that the physical effects are just random natural events and Satan just taunts Job from the sidelines? God gave Satan permission to attack Job. Satan did such. Many attacks were physical. Provide your Scriptural evidence that those attacks did not come from Satan.
The final problem here is that it's entirely predictable, based on 1) the design of these systems, plus 2) the vast storehouse of data they access, that AI is going to be throwing up very weird, often unsettling things. Consider all the weird, unsettling things on the whole Internet! That's the data trove these systems are pulling from.
I think the classic case is Roose's uncanny dialogue featured in the NYT. Creepy as it is, it doesn't at all mean that something from outside the system was involved. It's all comprehensible in terms of Roose's prompts and how Bing has been designed, plus the fact that Bing has "read" every bit of cheesy fan fiction and love chat on the web. This is a good rundown:
https://incidentdatabase.ai/blog/improv-ai/
It is very very hard for us humans to avoid sensing intentionality in what looks exactly like human-generated language. But in my thinking, this is THE challenge we're going to have to meet in order not to be taken in by the assaults of this new tech. Part of that challenge will entail not seeing ghosts in the machine when others begin to worship those ghosts.
Exorcists agree that demons can infect a system, yes. But if the system's own parameters can explain what it's doing, I'd say: Don't diagnose demons. Imho.
Thing is, how will we know how to distinguish apparent intentionality from real, if the latter should ever arise? Far better, I think, to be suspicious of anything that looks like intentionality.
It's a logical position to take in theory, but it doesn't work as an approach in this case, and the reason it doesn't work is the sheer scale of the problem. Consider:
1) AI systems will often generate uncanny things by their very design.
2) These systems are only going to get more and more sophisticated at mimicking humans even as they get more subtly attuned to what humans are asking from them.
3) Hundreds of millions of people are going to be using these systems for far too much, including for ersatz companionship and as Ouija boards.
4) We *already*, even at this stage, have a serious problem not reading intentionality into AI speech.
This final point is what I keep stressing as THE main danger, and I really don't think many people out there are grasping it. It's not that AIs will be harboring demons, but that our own brokenness and tendency to read intentionality into inanimate phenomena makes us easy prey. AI is going to become immensely destructive of our spiritual health without any actual demons needed. And as you say, we won't be able to tell the difference.
In fact, this is why I simultaneously think Rod's predictions about AI as a religious force are correct, but that his claims that AI is hosting demons are not helpful. These latter claims play into the very delusions that many will embrace, and already are embracing. We need to be fighting these delusions. If you want to fight a rising "AI religion", you don't do it by diagnosing spiritual entities in the system. Especially not in a culture where half the kids think it would be cool to contact demonic entities and where you have Silicon Valley and other elites who'd delight at the prospect of presiding over a mass religious movement.
Agreed. My point is simply that while the presence of the demonic in AI isn't necessary, it's not impossible: we need to be on our guard either way. Like it or not, a new thing is here and we have to prepare to deal with it.
Yes, indeed. It’s not impossible. But just as a real exorcist needs to be able to rule out cases that are mental illness rather than actual demonic possession, a savvy interpreter of AI phenomena needs to rule out things that look strange, but are easily explained by how LLMs work. There’s going to be a lot of “mental illness” inherent to the system.
One essay that I read described it as a grasping for reality that it hasn't yet achieved, hence its many weird and bizarre results. Can't help saying that this observation struck me as very Frankenstein-like.
The other key point is for LLMs they are trained precisely to produce the most likely phrase from their prompts. What this means in practice is that the words and patterns we see repeated throughout human writing is what GPT will be trained to replicate--we are literally training models to say what humans expect.
You can try this method yourself. If I say:
"Merry _________"
And ask you to fill in the blank, what will 99% of you do? Probably respond with Christmas. Did you read my mind, or use magic to determine what I was thinking? Or maybe did the angels, in the spirit of the season, want you to give reference to Jesus?
No to all 3; you said Christmas because 99.9% of the time, those two words are uttered as a single phrase. LLMs work *precisely* the same way. They're a sign, not of demons or spirits, but just that human speech is ultimately very pattern oriented and repetitive
Yes, which is why they can seem so humanlike and also why, when one approaches arcane topics in direct dialogue with them, they will tend to generate surreal utterances. They're reaching for a grab bag of archived phrases, and that grab bag on any out-of-the-way topic will be smaller and show more eccentric variation. Ask a question about historical data and facts, and the system gives something like a standard encyclopedia entry, start discussing odd or mixed subjects, and the system will begin to sound unhinged. Or "possessed".
I HATE MATH. Math is all fine and good and useful, I’m exhausted by living in a world where it’s the only thing that matters.
I have to go away on retreat again to get away from it all.
My techy husband of almost 23 years is finally seeing the light of how destructive this attitude is. He finally sees with his own eyes the 2 humsn beings whose souls have been destroyed. But it took 23 years and 2 souls for him to get it.
We are living in what Rene Guenon called "the reign of quantity."
Yes!
Regarding the war in Ukraine, the statement by Chalyi does more than add additional evidence to support the assertion that the U.S. and the U.K. blocked any effort to bring the war to an early end. It also proves that the war itself was provoked by the U.S., notwithstanding protestations from the mainstream elite to the contrary.
Had the U.S. really supported a peaceful outcome in Ukraine, had it really believed that it was up to Ukraine to decide how to deal with the conflict, it would not have blocked what appears more and more to have been a sincere effort to stop the war. But this was not the intent or the motivation of the U.S. It had wanted this war and would therefore do everything it could, not only to provoke it, but to block any effort to stop it.
I'd go further and say that it was clear to some people even longer ago than that: people like Stephen Cohen and John Mearsheimer, for instance. The history of the conflict and its antecedents is littered with examples of bad faith and machinations engineered by the U.S., the U.K., and the E.U.: the E.U.'s insistence in 2013 that Ukraine could not maintain full economic relations with Russia*, the West's deceitful behavior over the Minsk "agreements," the U.S.'s refusal to consider Russia's proposals offered in late 2021, early 2022, and so forth.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad5Fy3RNkY0 , in particular at 5:44, although the entire interview is very much worth viewing.
I don't think you understand. This was all done under a Democratic President, and therefore it's all moral and ethical.
Yep, although they can say that their strategic goal (NATO troops on the border of Russia) was reached with Finland joining NATO, which probably wouldn't have happened without the Ukraine war. Now that stationing is not as juicy as Ukrainian bases would be, but it's still very significant. NATO is, after all, and always has been, an anti-Russian alliance. It has no other actual purpose than to counter the Russians in every way possible.
I'm not saying that to defend the war-mongering the US engaged in with Ukraine for its own strategic interests, but just pointing out that the existing Atlantic security structures all presuppose the containment of Russia, and so it was to be expected that this would be the approach and policy. The only way the Russians could have avoided that was by Russia becoming basically a big version of Germany, but even that probably doesn't work because it's far too big, and would play an uncomfortably large role in the EU (even if it were, so to speak, a "normal EU country" in its national mindset, politics and so on). That's why the idea has been instead to marginalize the Russians, and, ideally at some future stage, to dismantle the existing country, which is simply too big, and remake it into smaller chunks that are separate and more manageable/palatable for the rest of Europe to deal with -- again, even assuming Russia were to become a "normal country" politically.
Basically there's no way to fit Russia into the existing structures, even if Russia weren't Putinized. It's too big.
What use is Finland and Sweden to NATO? It is not as if either would invade Russia in case of war. Sweden doesn't even share a border with Russia.
Without American troops, doesn't NATO become impotent and leaderless?
Psychologically, Finland joining is very powerful. Don't forget the Winter War, where the Soviets failed to crush Finland. It was part of the reason Hitler thought conquering Russia would be easy...
True. The Russo-Finnish War was one of my registered term papers at college. But I don't think modern Finns would be willing to die by the thousands.
You might be surprised. I know a few Finnish descendants who live up here, and they are a stubborn lot, who don't like to be told what to do by anyone. They are also feisty. And they still hate Russia.
Perhaps without American troops NATO would become stronger. Our trans-themed armed forces is having serious recruitment problems.
I have three observations, one of which is not my own:
1. “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” - Richard Sakwa.
2. In the long term it was stupid of Finland and Sweden to decide to join NATO. Their policies of neutrality had worked well. Now, with NATO more or less installed on Finland’s border with Russia, a new possible flash point has been created. Likewise Sweden, especially given its location on the Baltic Sea.
It would also have been stupid for most of the previous members of NATO to allow in more states that would increase the risk of war rather than diminish it. It is, after all, possible for an alliance to become too large and in the process make its size an impediment to realization of its ostensible purpose. However, this “alliance” really serves to keep vassal states under U.S. control and keep the American armaments industry in business.
Your statement, that “the idea has been instead to marginalize the Russians, and, ideally at some future stage, to dismantle the existing country,” adds a great deal to the point I’m trying to make. I assume that when you state that “the existing Atlantic security structures all presuppose the containment of Russia” you mean to refer to an ostensible purpose, unless by “containment” you mean an effort intended ultimately to result in Russia’s dismemberment. Either way, your point to me at least demonstrates the stupidity of NATO enlargement.
3. There is the ridiculous mantra that any state (almost) can join NATO. I think part of the motivation to getting Finland and Sweden into NATO was to show that Russia “lost” the war. It was a way for the West to thumb its nose at Putin. But for the reasons stated above, and in your comment, and elsewhere, I think the result of Finnish and Swedish membership in NATO could end up being bad for those two countries, for the other European members of NATO, and ultimately for the U.S.
If the point was to be made that any state (almost) can join NATO, it would have been far less hazardous to admit some out of the way country like the Marshall Islands.
Admitting the former Warsaw Pact nations to NATO was a colossal mistake. With their simmering grievances and territorial disputes, they've put the original, core members of the alliance at risk. And now with newer members like North Macedonia and Montenegro, which didn't even exist on any map a few years ago, NATO is even more unstable and less cohesive. You're right, the faraway Marshall Islands would have been a better choice.
Who next into NATO? The Bahamas?
San Francisco's entire 2024 Pride contingent, you know, a flotilla of pretty boys in hot pants bumping & grinding to the disco beat.
Perhaps they can seduce the enemy.
One of the strategic interests of the US is to keep Russia and China apart. Since the war in Ukraine that goal has failed miserably. From state visits to major economic agreements, Russia and China are closer than they've been in decades.
Yep. Nixon's diplomacy has been destroyed. But it helped kill the USSR.
Correct. The US and UK did not want the war to end, at least not quickly. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated publicly early in the war (April '22) the US wanted Russia weakened by the Ukraine war.
This article has a paywall but the URL gives the key phrase and the article features a direct quote from Austin stating the US wants Russia "weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/25/russia-weakened-lloyd-austin-ukraine-visit/
Lloyd Austin is about as dumb as Robert Kagan except that Kagan has proved that he can write a coherent essay.
Yeah, he was a recipient of "diversity hire" benefits for the entirety of his career. During my entire time in the Army post-aughts, that was his time as a senior officer. I knew of most of the general/admirals who emerged in those years, and knew personally a couple of them. I had never heard of Austin. On his very best days, he was a bureaucrat functionary, not anywhere near worthy of SecDef, or even to bear stars. He's not the first mediocrity to be elevated, sure, but an example, just like Gay, of what it looks like when a mediocrity is put into an important post for reasons that have nothing to do with personal merit.
No one I knew in the service knew who he was. I had one colleague tell me, "Austin was a great pick for that posting. He has the support of the troops." I said, "Really? Which ones? Because of what?" He could not answer.
Regarding keeping Trump off the ballot, et cetera (i.e., making it almost impossible for RFK, jr., to run in the Democratic primaries):
We used to have some bedrock principles in this country that public officials as well as ordinary citizens believed in, at least superficially: the freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to due process. All of that, and more, seems to have been run through the shredder. What many of us thought was sacrosanct, is no longer.
The U.S. doesn't have a common religion or some other cultural glue that binds us together. Without those bedrock principles, what is there to hold it all together? This is why these efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, to keep Marianne Williamson and RFK, jr., from challenging Biden, are manifestations of the loss of a common understanding of purpose, the result of deliberate efforts.
Hasn't it struck you that all these state-level challenges to Trump's appearing on the ballot are all taking the insurrection angle? There are stories on X that these are all Soros-funded, which is more than plausible, but if they're not they're all coming from one source.
The left media and voters are all dialed in on the "fascism" of the Trump right. They're all on the same page.
Same with Liz Cheney and the neo-cons -- funny how the left-leaners in the establishment media have discovered a new found love for them. Did you see the "disagreement" between Cheney and Colbert when she was on his show recently? They both agree that Trumpism is "fascist," but disagreed over whether that was a general GOP tendency that DT capitalized on (Colbert) or was strictly a MAGA thing (Cheney). Which proves they are both nitwits.
Liz Cheney is a very bitter woman, so bitter that she doesn't think logically any longer. She not only expected to be a senator from Wyoming, she thought that she was presidential. Her political career is now in ruins. History has passed her by. Further, as a Cheney, she is very sheltered and removed from ordinary Americans.
Yep, and the wokesters all look at her as some sort of hero -- "a true committed honest conservative who saw the light." They have no clue.
Weird how time goes on, she's more and more like Hillary in comportment and appearance. Short, dumpy, perpetually scowling.
Menopause is rough on women.
It was inevitable that Soros would take his Color Revolution playbook to America. The one major power center that the Davos class doesn't own and control is the American polity and the ability of Americans to dash all their plans through the ballot...that is why they need to transform democracy into Our Democracy™, so the peasant class can never interfere with their plans again.
There is simply no point having all that money and power if a few million Deplorables in a few flyover states can challenge it...that's why this threat needs to be neutralized.
And one of their ongoing sources of anger and frustration, and also showing the unique character of this nation, is that despite their best efforts, we have been surprisingly resilient and resistant to them. That they indeed cannot just buy their way.
Hence the efforts to get rid of the Electoral College, which would mean coastal elite rule in perpetuity. Or as Gary North used to put it, "One man, one vote, one time."
I miss Gary North. He was a libertarian who understood reality unlike most libertarians who live in a fantasyworld.
Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution explains that the States have the primary authority over election administration, the “times, places, and manner of holding elections”. They can decide who gets on the ballot and who doesn’t, based on state laws and the United States Constitution. And a lot of people have been kept off of a lot of ballots over the years:
https://www.pogo.org/reports/routine-disqualification-every-state-has-kept-ineligible-candidates-off-the-ballot-and-trump-could-be-next
Meanwhile, to everyone deeply concerned about state-level challenges to Trump's appearing on the ballot, I would remind you of the slate of fake electors - which I find much more shattering to our bedrock principles and cultural glue - through which President Trump and his allies attempted to hold onto power:
"when Trump could not persuade state officials to illegally swing the election in his favor, he and his Republican allies began recruiting a slate of fake electors in seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to sign certificates falsely stating that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, had won their states."
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-jan-6-investigation-fake-electors-608932d4771f6e2e3c5efb3fdcd8fcce
Almost all of the fake electors have been turning states' evidence as quickly as they can, and pleading guilty, BTW.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-fake-electors-buckle-wisconsin-get-charged-nevada-2023-12-07/
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) may have a high falutin' name but that doesn't make them a disinterested observer.
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/trump-should-be-barred-from-holding-office
What you posted is an op-ed. What I posted was a history of disqualifications of candidates in the United States.
Well yes, Eve, it's a list of disqualifications And, yes, there are many. And also irrelevant to this situation.
But, what makes you think I posted an op-ed, as opposed to an 'ed', seeing how the authors of the 'ed' are on staff at POGO.
Which is, of course, my point.
95% of all op-ed writers are "on staff" of any site/magazine/newspaper. And most try to have one or two of the "opposite" side on so they can generate a nice "Crossfire" vibe. Thus Michael Novak on PBS, etc.
No one (no one in possession of the facts and a working brain) is saying that unfairly targeting Trump disculpates him. But even the editorial boards of the WaPo and the New York Times, and Ruthie Marcus think this is a stupid idea. It's also sinister.
Yes, it is. But legally, constitutionally - it's their decision to make.
The same way all the literacy tests and poll taxes, etc., used to disenfranchise blacks in the pre Civil Rights Era South were legal - at the time.
Then, as now, being legal does not make you right. Now, they are associated with some of the great villians of American history. Same as it ever was.
Yes. Law and order until you don't like the laws. I've heard that one a lot over my many decades... and from EVERY side, including some you may never have dreamed of.
It is not a matter just of whether you like the law or not. There IS concrete actual right and wrong, and it does not come from Man. The very basis of law, our Constitution, was established on that understanding. Money, or force of arms, does not change that.
What needs to happen is exactly what will happen (we hope): that SCOTUS will finally rule on what the states can and cannot do about elections, specifically define Section 3 of Article 1, which has never been done. Then again, SCOTUS might just punt it.
Very troublesome if true. But then I always wonder why the Podhorzer "Shadow Campaign" gets a pass. The fact that something so obviously conspiratorial gets ignored by BOTH parties is in itself quite telling. All this fraud, missing ballots, fake electors, gerrymandering stuff is a huge "Look over there!" away from what really happened in 2020: the capture of the election "machine" by a cross-party cabal of tech, media, corporate, and political elites under the guise of "ensuring safe and fair elections." Foundationally, this is far more fascist than MAGA is on its worst day.
Amen.
I took a look at the POGO piece. I didn’t know what POGO was until now. My conclusion is that there is less in that “report” than meets the eye.
But first, this: The issue is Due Process. Not whether Trump has behaved badly. In the same way the issue when the ACLU (the old one, not the group masquerading as such currently) defended the right of Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois, was the defense of freedom of expression, not the defense of Nazi ideology. So, to criticize the Colorado Supreme Court or the Secretary of State of Maine is not to praise Trump but to condemn the evisceration of fundamental principles that undergird the American political experiment.
The POGO article surprised me. I expected something more sophisticated, but instead it became obvious that it is based on a make weight argument. Here are three illustrations.
1
“All three branches of government have called the attack on the Capitol an insurrection.” The link* is to a House Resolution, No. 24, resolving to impeach Trump in connection with what he allegedly did in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. Yet nothing in the resolution provides any support for POGO’s statement that “[a]ll three branches of government” called the “attack” an insurrection. If I’m wrong about that, please show me.
Moreover, the linked document shows that the Senate determined, on a vote of 57 to 43, that Trump was “not guilty as charged.” Since the Legislative branch of the federal government is made up of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, to say that this branch has “called the attack” an insurrection is simply incorrect, since one of the two house of the Legislature found Trump “not guilty.”
2
The second illustration I offer is the reference by POGO to the decision in a case involving Abdul Hassan to exclude a naturalized citizen from running for President, an office which the Constitution provides can only be held by a native born citizen. But significantly, Hassan participated in the litigation. The court’s conclusion, that Hasan was barred notwithstanding the Fourteenth Amendment, came as a result of litigation in which Hasan participated.**
The Hassan case calls to mind the suggestions, made I believe by Trump himself, among others, that Obama was not a native born citizen and was thus ineligible to hold office as President. Had some administrative officer determined that Obama’s name could not appear on the ballot, one would expect, in a nation of laws, that a judicial determination would require litigation in which Obama would be a participant.
3
Many of the “facts” on which the POGO report purports to rely are simply a recounting of allegations, recommendations, and other, in some cases obviously politically motivated, statements of one sort or another. But none of these support judicial action to remove someone from the ballot who has not participated in the litigation.
Granted, secretaries of state have the responsibility to determine whether a person satisfies the requirements for being a candidate, such as age, citizenship, birth, criminal history, and so forth. However, in such cases the affected person has a right to respond in a judicial setting. Even the POGO report implicitly acknowledges this point with regard to the matter of Nicholas Kristof. The Oregon Secretary of State determined that Kristof did not meet the state’s residency requirement. If you follow the link provided by POGO you will see that in the letter stating that determination, the Secretary of State noted that Kristof had the right to “file an appeal to the appropriate circuit court.” *** Thus, Kristof, like Hassan, had the right to initiate litigation to challenge the Secretary of State’s determination.
By contrast, the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision came in a case in which Trump apparently was not a participant. In addition, in all of the cases, including Colorado and Maine, in which efforts are being made to disqualify him from candidacy based on January 6, reliance is placed on implied “findings” that are not the result of any due process. That is the problem here.
(As for the rest of your comment, the fact that Trump may have behaved badly in other respects has nothing to do with whether the court in Colorado made a decision in a case in which Trump was afforded his due process rights.)
* https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/24/text
** https://casetext.com/case/hassan-v-colorado
*** https://www.opb.org/pdf/Nick%20Kristof%20letter_1641494829192.pdf
Those were not fake electors. Trump made the argument (convincingly I might add) that he won those states fairly. His electors were then part of the legal challenge to Biden.
A more appropriate term would be to say that both Trump and Biden's electors were contested, but the newspaper assumed Biden was the victor without taking the matter to court
Every legal challenge (62 in all) that Trump filed was rejected by the various courts, including state and federal courts, and many of the judges who ruled on it were Trump appointees.
And the attempt by Texas AG Ken Paxton to sue Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin election results, filed with SCOTUS, was rejected by SCOTUS.
Rejected without the cases, the evidence getting a public hearing and viewing. Very telling.
Check the math: Ukrainian war deaths are well above 300,000, not 30,000. Well over half a million wounded. They lost 125,000 since the summer “offensive” alone for immeasurable gain. I wish none of this happened, but with Frau Genocide, Sgt Scholtz, Jenny Dapper Doltenberg, Jake the Snake, Viktoria von Nuland, The Sniffer, BoJo mad hair, and Raytheon Austin, et al at the helm, was expected.
Back in October 2022, Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president and noted war monger, said in a speech that 100K Ukrainian "officers" had already been killed. She's not the brightest person in Brussels but surely had access to accurate numbers as opposed to the propaganda emanating from Kiev.
“Pope Francis made a very foolish administrative mistake in promulgating his same-sex blessing policy … What is he going to do to the national bishops’ conferences who openly refuse to obey him here? These are bishops from the most faithfully believing Catholic countries (particularly those in Africa) — the ones most inclined to respect and obey papal authority. Francis has blundered away the mystique of papal power.”
That these African bishops are from “the most faithfully believing Catholic countries”—it’s exactly this that lands them on the current pope’s Unimportant List. I think we’ve seen more than enough to finally *get* this pope. He introduced himself as pope of the poor and marginalized as against, say, “arrogant American right-wing Catholics”, yet at the end of the day, look, he’s precisely the pope of Arrogant America. His papal authority has been put in service of every single elite initiative, from climate hysteria, to the demand for open borders in Europe and the US, to bowing to COVID authoritarianism, and now to aping first-world notions of “marginal” by codifying the concerns of Fr. James Martin in a DDF document.
In short, people really on the margins (millions of faithful African Catholics, say) are not on this pope’s radar. But if one can find “victims” or causes precious to US coastal elites, just watch him jump! There he is, ready to get a photo op as one of the “virtuous”.
Remember that Father Martin extends his concern all the way to TQ+, and that Gregory has said "trans people" are close to the heart of the Church. Francis had a problem on his hands and this is how he solves it.
Yup. All people are close to the heart of the Church, of course. But that doesn't mean the Church's heart allows it to subscribe to every ideological claim anyone wants to make. For this pope, however, it's western secular ideologies that are given priority.
The degree to which this has become the center for FrancisChurch was finally cemented for me by the grotesque Synod and Synodality.
https://claytestament.blogspot.com/2023/11/synodality-to-synodolatry-imperial.html
Gregory's remark in its studied ambiguity is diabolical.
"...he’s precisely the pope of Arrogant America"
Wow.
Yes, Ukraine has suffered big losses. So did Poland in WWII-- proportionally more than Russia did. Should Poland have just rolled over for the Hitler and Stalin? Should nations just welcome invaders?
Sometimes one can get the feeling in this space that Russia is a mindless force of nature and no blame can be cast on it for this bloodbath. Reminds me a bit of the way some leftists refuse to denounce black criminals since they are "victims" of racism, poverty etc., and can't help but be murderous thugs.
Russia is not blameless but let's dispense with the notion - so prevalent in the mainstream mindset - that this war is *entirely* the fault of Russia, which was completely unprovoked, and Putin is probably crazy too.
The war is the fault of Russia. Putin and his toadies were perfectly free to reject the option of war, just as a thug in West Baltimore is perfectly free not to grab a gun and blow his rivals away. Claiming otherwise in either case is morally obtuse.
Stop making excuses for crimes.
Ukrainian nationalists began shelling the breakaway Donbas oblasts in 2014, resulting in the deaths of 14,000, many of them civilians. In late 2021, early 2022, there were signs that Ukraine was poised to launch a major offensive to reclaim Donbas. Were the evil Ruskies provoked?
Putin is responsible for the war to the same extent that the U.S. was "responsible" for the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In what world was Putin not supposed to react to the expansion of NATO to his very doorstep? In what world does a great power not respond forcefully to such a provocation? From the Russian standpoint, and no it's not some moral failing to attempt to see things through different eyes, Putin had to act. He did. We knew he would - that was a feature and not a bug. We wanted to provoke him and we did. Washington got the war it wanted. Both Ukraine and Russia got a lot more dead than they would have otherwise had had the war been concluded early. But Washington wasn't having that.
Re: In what world was Putin not supposed to react to the expansion of NATO to his very doorstep?
NATO was already on Russia's doorstep: see: the Baltics. And Poland. Was that a good idea? No (though I can see why Poland wanted in NATO). But Russia did not invade its neighbors over it. And now Finland is in NATO, and Sweden soon will be, albeit someone has to sweeten Orban's pot enough for him to drop the drama queen act about Sweden (which I don't understand anyway). Way to score own goals, Putin! Meanwhile Ukraine was not a candidate for NATO membership. No, this war is all Russia's doing, period, every bit as much as the Iraq War of 2003 and following was the doing of the US, even though Saddam Hussein was a real bastard and 9-11 an atrocity.
You're basically saying Putin would have been justified in invading the Baltics or Poland.
Again: Putin is responsible for the war in Ukraine to the extent the US was responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or perhaps you think we would have permitted Soviet missles in central America, or perhaps Mexico?
Not a good analogy. The Iraq War is a better one. With Putin = Bush and Cheney
What does Saddam H. have to do with 9/11?
Yeah, it's pretty damn obvious that we were poking the bear for almost 10 years then crapped our pants when said bear responded in an unexpected and untoward manner. Some people can't seem to tell the difference between explanation and justification.
This is the question that the Surrender Caucus won’t answer: what exactly should Ukraine have done after the Russians invaded? Rolled over? Given up? We already know how that story ends - Holodomor.
Ukraine isn't a real country anyway, and should never have been split from Russia in the first place.
Putin is taking back rightful Russian clay
WOW! That's a bold statement. Do you believe Putin can rightfully take back the 14 countries listed below that left the Soviet Union since 1991?
Edit to Add:
Where would you draw the line on when a country becomes a "real country"? Should Mexico take back the SW United States? Should the UK take back the US colonies? You get the point.....a large portion of world would change, assuming it's possible to actually determine what countries are "real".
I don't frequently agree with Bill Maher's views but his latest New Rules episode discusses this issue in an interesting and entertaining manner (although focused on Israel & Palestine). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-CRXROorw&t
Countries Formerly part of USSR:
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Estonia
Georgia
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Putin's having a hard enough time taking the parts of Ukraine with Russian demographic majorities. For Russia, the war is an embarrassment for Putin. Russia looks weak. Fifteen years from now, Putin will be dead or on his last legs. America should plan for a post-Putin Russia now.
Russia may look week from the West's perspective, but actually the multiple sanctions imposed on her has made her stronger and self-sufficient. Russia has a strong physical economy and can endure anything that's thrown at her. We had are monopolar moment, unfortunately we did not use it wisely for the good of other countries in the world. The unconstitutional behavior manifested in the Iraq War and regime change foreign policy have left destruction in it's wake and a bitter aftertaste. Growing up in an anti-Communist family environment, I had hoped the monopolar moment would be the panacea for humanity around the world after the end of the Cold War, but it was squandered. I haven't given up on America and never will, but I'm more skeptical because the current political suprastructres and bureaucracies make it practically impossible to effect change regardless who we elect from our political duopoly. The Benedict Option looks better with each passing year.
I have a number of Ukrainian friends & I assure you that Ukraine IS a real country. It has its own language, which is similar to Russian but not the same. It has its own culture & history. There’s also the matter of the Holodomor, which would explain why Ukraine is not thrilled about claims it should be returned to Russia. Should Mexico take Texas, New Mexico, Colorado & Utah back? Should China be able to take over Taiwan?
Ukraine is real, its people are real, they have earned my respect and I hope they rebuild their nation.
No. Ukraine had to fight. And I honor their self-respect as a country. But I am an American. America's policy toward Russia and Ukraine has been spectacularly flawed since 1991. Our policy could have prevented Russia's war against Ukraine. George Kennan was right regarding post 1991 Russia.
Enjoy your trip- hope there’s some proper pints of ale in your future (none of this 500ml lager nonsense!)
To the entities in question, there is no such thing as "closed system", not in material world terms. No code, security, lock or barrier can keep them out. Only permissions, granted to them by God, or us, allow them access. And only denying them permissions, or taking authority in Jesus's name, actively denies or expells them. It is quite possible what happened is what you say happened, Rod.
Oooooooooo, this is a good journal entry topic. Denying permission. I like that.
Rod, we are all grateful for your hypergraphia!
the man is a real graphomaniac
Him and Philp K. Dick.
As regards Caldwell’s essay, how can a very long form essay in “the premier journal of religion and public life” give a diagnosis of the 1990s but fail even to mention religion? Never mind Fr Neuhaus. (One fears that pot shots at James Buchanan and George Gilder now count as “religion.”)
"...how can a very long form essay in “the premier journal of religion and public life” give a diagnosis of the 1990s but fail even to mention religion?"
Perhaps because it was just about "public life"?
Nah, it's not an implicit "or." Journal titles or descriptions don't work that way. After all, first things are things that are also first. So I guess any essay on "things" will do?
On second thought, I came to think that Caldwell's essay may have been commissioned by RR wanting rethink the line that FT had been promoting, that our current "nemesis" (Rod's term) originated in the "libertarianism" of the Reagan years. What about a piece looking at the mischief of the next decade, then? That's a useful proposal, I think.
Christopher Caldwell is almost never wrong and he's once again correct. After the USSR and World Communism gave it all up, America became hubristic and arrogant. Our easy victory over Iraq in the first war has contributed to the arrogance. Like Cody Jarrett(Jimmy Cagney) in "White Heat", we were "on top of the world." If America could rewind the last thirty-five years like an old VCR tape, I bet we'd do a few things differently.
Further, the economic boom that began in 1983 and has been ongoing but for two very short recessions and one recession that was deeper and longer, has encouraged massive immigration from Third World nations who have no feel for America's culture or history. Economism became the rage in America, especially amongst "conservative" thinkers. The massive immigration radically altered the demographics of America and led to the decline of the Republican Party.
Everybody is saying the current decline is "sudden". We are the same distance from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait as the fall of Saigon was from Pearl Harbor.
"If America could rewind the last thirty-five years like an old VCR tape, I bet we'd do a few things differently"
But that's the problem - we wouldn't. We'd fully expect things would turn out differently/better because that, right there, is the American mindset: Let's never learn from our mistakes, and instead insist that any bad outcomes where THEMSELVES mistakes.
Fair comment. But I would say that most American conservatives have learned from the twin fiascos in the Middle East.
Speaking of Christopher Caldwell. I've cited below a 9/22 article by Caldwell which is as far as I've read, the single best analysis of America's Ukraine fiasco and the dangers of America's self destructive foreign policy that I've ever come across. It's a lengthy article and for those of you who are truly interested in the potential disasters that we American face because of our foreign policy, I would suggest you read it slowly and carefully. Not only is the article on the money but is is beautifully written. I'd especially recommend that Rod read it. He might learn something about which he writes so frequently.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/why-are-we-in-ukraine/
Sir, thanks for providing the Claremont article. I will read it tomorrow. Caldwell is a brilliant thinker and writer.
I just read it and it was a fascinating piece of writing. Thanks for providing it. I would have not read it otherwise.
It's a wonderfully written article, far better written and far more on the money than the Caldwell article cited by Rod. I'm sure Rod will not have read the article which is too bad because he would benefit from Caldwell's incite. Glad you enjoyed it.
About the exclusions of Trump from ballots, there's nothing in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment requiring conviction of insurrection.
Which is more “banana republic:” kicking Trump off the ballot only after he emerges as the frontrunner or not kicking him off the ballot, despite the Constitution, because he is a frontrunner and his followers disproportionately own guns?
I see this situation as tragic (a fatal flaw approaching its malign telos), with Colorado and Maine playing their ordained parts.
The most banana republic aspect is either that 1) Trump is a viable candidate at all, or 2) he is so irreplaceable to his supporters.
It seems fair that Ukraine becomes part of the European Union and receives massive funding from the European Union to rebuild Ukraine. After all, Ukraine was devastated by the Ukraine-Russian war, a war NATO, essentially the European Union's military arm, encouraged. There is a moral obligation on the part of the European Union.
I disagree with Caldwell that the root of American hubris was in the 1990s - I argue that it was in the late 1940s and 1950s, when most of the rest of the world was rubble after WW2 except America, and we had the factories, the money, and the power to do anything we wanted to do. What confirms this for me is the number of people I STILL hear saying, "we need to go back to the 1950s". My response is always, "you can't have that monopoly on power, money, and commerce without the world war before it - so you really want a World War 3? Because we might not be the winners this time, you know." But they can't believe it. "American exceptionalism" and all that.
I do agree with Caldwell's, "America’s discovery of world dominance might turn out in the 21st century to be what Spain’s discovery of gold had been in the 16th — a source of destabilization and decline disguised as a windfall."
American exceptionalism only works when compared with traditional American wisdom, restraint and humility. When it becomes just the American version of sniffing one's own farts, we get what we get. And unfortunately, it costs us blood and treasure.
Amen. We began losing all restraint in the 1950s, and ever since... "We're number 1!" But no one stays number 1 forever.
Well, we were finding our way in the Cold War, a mixed bag, but overall successful, strategically speaking, even masterfully so. With even highs of restraint (how the Korean War concluded), and the Cuban Missle Crisis and lows, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs. How we came out of it ranged from restraint of older, wiser generations (George Bush, Desert Storm), to boomers who still listened to wise voices (most of Bill Clinton's foreign policy was good) to when things started falling apart (Dubya, Obama). Trump tried putting sensible restraints back in, and was successful, but that got derailed by Biden's election. And now, we are here.
Valid point. The victory in World War Two led to hubris on the foreign policy front but also on the domestic. The World War Two generation- God bless them- believed that any problem could be solved by the American government. They proved incorrect.
Another way of looking at this is to say that nobody has known how to manage mass prosperity, which is really something new in the world.
It is. What's interesting is that mass prosperity has made people even more greedy, selfish, and savage than they were before.
I don't know about more savage, but America has become much more greedy and selfish. Americans expect cheap food and exotic vacations and endless entertainment.
Instant gratification, that's modern America.