My wife (who works in intl development) points out that there is already a huge backlash across Africa and other parts of the developing world in direct response to US and Western nagging (and more) about LGBTQ issues - governments there are passing strong anti-LGBTQ laws, effectively telling US State and the rest of us to go **** ourselves. So not only is repurposing our entire focus overseas on woke/LGBTQ annoying and shortsighted, it's actually having the precise opposite effect of what was intended. As always, great job.
Har! Thought you'd spot the inconsistency in my analogy. Nope, in the end, GWB didn't succumb to hereditary madness. But seriously, when I first met GRRM in 1998 he was warning exactly about stuff like this, long before Iraq. Then we go and do it.
Are you sure it wasn't hereditary madness? If another Bush ever became president (*shudder*), I feel like he too might not be able to resist the possibly epigenetic urge to go play with the Middle East.
Also, I read an inadvertently hilarious thing about how Martin is mad that his fans worry he'll die before he finishes the books.
Well....I guess I'm just an independent thinker who disagrees with virtually everyone here on the subject of GWB, but I'm brave (i.e., I'll say what I think)...I think Bush was naive and well meaning. We didn't hesitate to free Germany for democracy, that was his frame of reference.
I would really like to read the inadvertently hilarious thing about Martin - any links? As for me, one of the biggest fans, I'm not one bit worried - I feel reasonably certain he will pass before putting out another book, though he may live on for quite a while. - - Btw, I think there was a recent attempt at cancellation after George saluted some past great sci fi writers that the woke no longer like at an awards ceremony.
One of the concerns about TikTok is that it has an outsized effect on what and how younger people think. Even on just a very basic level it's a further destroyer of attention span.
I don't think anyone should have a smart phone unless absolutely needed. They are a perfect example of a luxury turned into a convenience and then a necessity (or at least a perceived one).
I'd say that it has become a necessity by now because our holistic environment has been built around the assumption that people have one. it's not as easy as just opting out on a strictly individual basis; that's sort of like saying a car isn't necessary while living in the suburbs.
I've never had one and don't plan to unless they become the only option. Opting out from the beginning was likely easier than getting hooked then trying to opt back out.
I'm young and live in a city, and my job requires steady remote access to e-mail. That's what I mean: now this is a professional expectation, so the only way to opt out would be to also decline any forms of employment that require it.
Anyway, the broader point is simply that when your environment assumes that you have a smartphone, to not have one is practically to operate with a handicap. You would need to build your entire lifestyle around not having one, make that the top priority.
I haven't got a computer, a tablet, or a TV, but I do have a phone. Smartphones didn't exist until I was 55, by which time I'd long since realized my level and form of corruption.
What I could never abide in the near decade before I got a phone was the sight of a group of people, each magnetized by the glowing screen. I swore I'd never become one of them, and I never have.
I went for a long time without a computer -- about 7 years -- and I have a TV but I use it for DVD's only. Do I miss out on some things? Sure. But I'm much happier remaining minimally connected.
Although given what we've learned about the Pentagon's ability to simply purchase data from ad exchanges and learn a lot about us, it's hard to imagine the CCP hasn't done the same.
The very clear and obvious attempt by the BRICS to found an alternative to the North American/Western European economic and political order must be taken more seriously by the policy elites. If China truly succeeds in establishing an alternative to the dollar's reserve status (questionable, given China's own potential instability as an authoritarian regime), we will lose a significant means of policy leverage. The blindness of our elites in the moral narcissism, however, is likely going to keep them blind to these very practical concerns as well.
Remove the "S" from BRICS? It stands for South Africa, right? which is quickly on its way to failed statehood. Unless the Chinese decide to recolonize it.
It’s not only the Chinese who are motivated to establish a new reserve-type currency. The prospect of a “multipolar” world which is not subject to U.S. use of the dollar as a lever of power appeals to more and more countries. And another part of the appeal of BRICS is that the leading powers that started it reject interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. But the relative size of the Chinese economy certainly puts it in a leadership role and one might reasonably wonder how the Chinese view the endgame.
Is the Chinese goal to become the new hegemon of the world, or at least of the non-Western part of it? Maybe, but I doubt it. Nothing in Chinese history, philosophy, or culture suggests that the Chinese want to remake the rest of the world into China’s image. China may aspire to economic dominance. It may achieve economic dominance even without necessarily intending to do so, but that doesn’t mean it will rely on, or impose, cultural and societal change in other countries with which it deals.
I would advise strongly skepticism about the Chinese economy. Polite lies have been standard in that nation since the days of emperors demanding only good news from their servants
And China is tied too tightly to the US to become an independent hegemon
Well, what do you make of China's massive investments across Africa and (increasingly) Latin America? It appears to be engaging in a kind of neo-colonial enterprise in these regions. Its Belt and Road initiative seems designed to manage whatever economic hegemony it can achieve. As for the polite lies, things appear to have worked well enough in many ways, although your point is validated heavily by the way they handled (or are still handling) COVID.
Whereas in contrast, America's "evangelism" has produced great resentment around the world and deservedly won us many enemies who might not have minded our economic dominance alone.
China has a history of wanting to be the center of the world, "The Middle Kingdom". It likes being acknowledged as being of utmost importance, the prime nation. It doesn't actually have a cultural history of wanting to conquer other areas.
In the end, China would love being the top nation of the world, but would reject being the "World's Policeman".
china might not one to be the world's policeman, but the recipients of China's Belt and Road money are starting to realize China has become their landlord. Chinese spending abroad is not exactly philanthropic in nature, and foreigners have discovered that when they take Chinese money they enserf themselves to Beijing's financial interests to the detriment of their own.
It was always a soft enslavement. China just wants to be honored. America has been far worse, forcing globohomo on client nations as well as causing client nations to open up their markets to American control.
It's not, Jon. It's easy to overstate, but it's not. It's on the record that what finally turned Mutti against Putin was his supposed meanness to gays. (For the record, I know someone with the languge who spent time in Russia within the past seven years and gays do their thing with discretion--it's Pussy Riot that goes to jail.) It would be folly to say that it is largely anti-anti-gay prejudice that fuels the animus against Putin, but to discount it is not to understand who our rulers are. According to Michael Beschloss, Orban is "brutal" because you can't give how-to blowjob manuals to elementary school kids in Hungary.
There is a history of anti-Chinese pogroms in SE Asia, and I can imagine that the new Chinese military could be used to stop such violence should it reoccur.
It's not odd at all, they simply lacked the capability. That's all. A State department China expert I knew told me that the Chinese diaspora has always been seen in China as a matter of interest. And if China were to change course and move to a more imperial stance, anti-Chinese pogroms would be a handy excuse.
OTOH China did side with the Khmer Rouge while they massacred ethnic Chinese. Then again, that regime did kill 50-90 million Chinese in their own country. So a principled stand by China is a real long shot.
South of China itself the Chinese diaspora is very much like, and very much regarded as, the Jews are the West. Bankers, merchants, educated, endogamous, and well hated.
I've been reading a lot of the late Canadian political philosopher George Grant recently. He was making a conservative case against American empire way back in the 60's, viewing first hand how Canada was losing its independence to U.S. influence.
Those of us who over the years have leaned paleo-con or trad-con have been well aware of these things for a long time. Paul Gottfried, for instance, has been writing since the early 2000's about the U.S. exportation of PoMo multi-culti. What Todd and Caldwell are saying isn't really new, therefore, but it's excellent that it's getting some currrent attention.
"What Todd and Caldwell are saying isn't really new, therefore, but it's excellent that it's getting some currrent attention."
It's like a forest fire. At first, maybe no one notices, but then a few people can smell a wisp of smoke, and then, little by little, the smoke thickens, and so on and so forth, until the flames become evident, first in the distance, and then closer and closer.
many decades ago US campuses fell to the radical left. The current skirmishes around campuses (and the larger culture), are in my opinion simply battles. The radical left won the war after leaving the academy victorious to then become dominant in the institutions. The west as a whole is now trudging along to becoming what the radical left wants it to be. There may be buyers remorse after the left becomes fully dominant. But can the west recover? Seems doubtful to me. I hope I'm wrong.
The classical text in this regard is Allan Bloom's account in COTAM of what went down at Cornell in 1968. It's not necessary to go all the way to Strauss-land with him to be compelled by his narration.
I can tell you where I was when I started reading it. On a bench in Central Park, looking south toward the Plaza over The Pond. I thought, wow, maybe something will give." What hopes.
I have been convinced for a long while now that we are living in the death spasms of the Fields of Flanders. Until then the traditions of the West held but a fundamental break, that possibly would never have happened during and after WWI. The decadence was there but it was also being contested and held back.
With Trump downplaying the threat posed by TikTok, a site with connections to the Chinese Communist Party, get ready to hear his die hard supporters talk about how great TikTok is and how conservatives shouldn't be worried about it at all.
Trump is so flawed and the architect of his own demise. Too bad his opponents just don't flatter him and he will give them every thing they want. Maybe we are lucky that they don't.
There are ZERO communists in China, notwithstanding what somebody labels himself. China's is a market driven, free-market, fascist economy, operated on the principle of the hive. All policy is directed to the benefit of the Chinese people/nation in aggregate. There's no room for Marxist nonsense in this scheme.
Re: All policy is directed to the benefit of the Chinese people/nation in aggregate.
Uh, no. File that with "the withering away of the state". Chinese policy is directed to the benefit of the oligarchs running the show in China-- hardly an unusual fact, or limited to China.
Last night Bill and I watched the Joe Dante film "The Second Civil War". He made it for HBO in 1997. We got our copy via the interlibrary loan.
Wow. Just Wow. The world is falling apart. The U.S. is falling apart and overwhelmed. The state of Idaho has already accepted over 1 million refugees and won't accept anymore leading to the crisis.
Watch it twice to catch everything. They could never make this film today, emphasizing racial and cultural strife (Mexican separatists bomb the Alamo!). It's very equal-opportunity, too.
Why do empires fail? Ignorance, hubris, military over-reach, financial weakness and mismanagement, lack of societal cohesion, gross incompetence and lack of accountability… . It’s easy to recognize these same factors at play in today’s America. And, as we all know, the true state of the United States is probably best described as a country in decline, perhaps even steep decline. Moreover, neither political party recognizes the seriousness of the moment, much less offers a path forward. We do indeed live in perilous times. My best guess is that the next serious financial crisis will weaken the United States to a degree that it will be obvious to even the most blind among us that we are on the precipice of collapse. We will either do what is necessary to address our problems or our lives will indeed become nasty, brutish, and short.
I tend to agree but I also know that a declining nation can muddle through the decline. Think of America's strengths. We have a tremendous agricultural output. We have a somewhat vibrant economy. We have easily the strongest military in the world. We can not be invaded by conventional armies but only by illegal aliens wishing to consume the scraps of the American economy.
"If the civilizational order fails at a Roman Empire level, well, most of us will likely still be here. What then? How will we live? How will we get through it until renaissance is possible?"
We'll do it the way they did in the "Dark Ages" (which weren't that dark, actually) - living in smaller enclaves and societies, with special people devoting themselves to maintaining the old learning and beliefs, watching out for marauders, and concentrating on what humans have for thousands of years: feeding / clothing / housing ourselves and our children.
Somewhere, a Byzantium will continue. (It did at the time, and lasted well into the 15th century.)
Sooner or later, the marauders will settle down, and the people who survive will join their enclaves to form kingdoms (for want of a better word).
Chaos never lasts forever: humans like living in stable, safe groups. A new culture will form. For those of us who, should the fall happen soon, and will never live to see the next renaissance, we will be no different than those who died in the late 500's AD, to whom St. Gregory the Great (Pope Gregory I) preached to "us, upon whom the end of the world has come", "Strengthen yourself to bear with the bad; If we are offspring of God's chosen ones, we must learn to live as they did." And begins with the example of Job.
Except they didn't live under the all-seeing eye of technology, where there is nowhere to hide. I don't know how we will survive in small, stable groups with government-controlled digital currencies.
Cash and barter. That's what worked then. Old Roman coins circulated for long after Rome stopped minting them. Eventually, the new kingdoms developed and minted their own currencies.
The whole point of digital currency is to eliminate cash, and they will come down hard on bartering. They want complete control, and we will all suffer. This level of control has never been seen before.
If Western Civilization collapses, as so many of Rod's references say it is going to, then there will be no central control, and the grid will have gone down. It'll be cash and barter. Pro-tip - start stashing cash, but don't make it 100s or 50s or even 20s. 1s, 5s, and 10s will be more useful.
I've pointed out before that eliminating cash is not feasible- in part because we need a backup for when the grid goes down (inevitably it will here and there now and then)-- and because the People On High have not-so-savory uses for cash too.
Scary fact: after the demographic crash of the 500s new coinage all but disappears from the archaeological record. And from analysis of pollutants in lake sediments it appears that across the Old World no one was bothering to mine and refine silver for almost a century. The depopulated world with barely any sort of long range trade was able to make due with the old coinage for a long time.
"While Mr. Todd is, again, not judgmental on sexual matters..." Why is he not judgmental on sexual matters? Is he fearful of being judged and of being unpopular? Are intellectual matters more important than sexual matters? Why are we all so resolute in our "non-judgmentalness" on sexual matters? Herein lies the problem that we face...There I said it. Have at it.
Let he who is without sin.....? Saying what is right and wrong is one thing but being judgmental (in a negative sense of that word) is another. - - There, I had at it :)
OK, we may have different semantic understanding of the word "judgmental" and that may be in play here. But I think Caldwell's semantics might have been closer to what I am thinking here.
There are many who have not yet made the connection between so-called "sexual liberation" and globalist homogeneity, possibly due to their ideological commitment (examined or unexamined) to the former. Maybe Todd is one of these. (Recall that Christopher Lasch was criticized and ultimately ignored for making such connections back in the 80s and 90s.)
Yes, I know, I read the article, and therein lies the intentionality of my comment. By being above it, the intellectual and secularist, refuses to grapple with it at all, let alone make a judgment. In theoretical/computational science, this is known as assuming away the problem. You just refuse to deal with it because it is too hard. But that is why we are where we are in the West. Let's not dwell on homosexuality, instead let's consider late-term abortion. When we discuss late-term abortion in the abstract, which is what we mostly do no matter which side of the divide one is on, we relieve ourselves of having to deal with the thing in itself. We don't deal with the details of how an abortion is done, what is done to the baby, the body parts being evacuated from the uterus, the effect on the woman, the effect on the attending health professionals etc. As such we can "kick" the idea around like a metaphorical football. And the practice continues because we have abstracted it from reality and then we do not judge it from a whole and real perspective. This leads to grievous results. The same is true of our treatment of homosexuality...but what the heck.
This argument doesn't take history into consideration, either the history of ideas or people's own personal history. In a way, it's similar to the wokester practice of judging people from the past by 21st C. standards. You should not ascribe to malice what can be explained by ignorance. Can we say that Todd should know better? Yes. And maybe sometime he will. But why throw the baby out with the bathwater in the meantime?
(1) We should do what we can to prevent decline, awareness and action, but; (2) We should not assume that decline, which in inevitable in the long run, is going to fully happen in our lifetimes. Rome was 500 years in it's decay. (3) There is a mental bias from consuming news. Yes, we should consume news, but the only thing newsworthy is the bad/concerning stuff. We miss much of the good.
People, spiritual peace and effectiveness is not a product of depression and certain-defeatism. We don't really know what will happen. Let's do our best and also admit we just do not know the outcome for certain.
I think saying "doom is certain" is no more likely to bring the change we hope for than saying what changes we need to make and how this will help people. How about - "this hurts us and doom may result but lets try this....."
To a much greater than most people are willing to admit, history is due to forces beyond human control. That's true in individual lives; it's true in the lives of nations. Though human hubris quails at the notion that we aren't running the show.
I think that confirmation bias is real, and that you are talking wisdom here. I also think that people experiencing personally difficult times like to project them onto society at large—and if you wanna look for bad things in the world, then you won't be disappointed, so it turns into a self-feeding loop. (On that I speak from experience.)
I'm with you on this. The guy predicting collapse can't lose. If it happens tomorrow, he gets to say "See! I told you so!" If it doesn't happen in his lifetime, he can still always claim it's going to happen.
But then pity poor Al Gore, whom I believe told us New York City was going to be underwater by now.
And, for those who can't access the article, Axios:
One potential factor at play is Trump's newly repaired relationship with billionaire Jeff Yass, who has a huge financial stake in Bytedance and has spent millions backing lawmakers who support TikTok.
"Days before his TikTok reversal, Trump publicly praised Yass for inviting him to a retreat held by Club for Growth, a powerful conservative group that also opposes banning the app.
Yass had previously donated $4.9 million to Vivek Ramaswamy, who last year became the only Republican presidential candidate to join TikTok — an app he once called "digital fentanyl."
Trump will side with anyone who will give / loan him money. I'm sure he's planning on getting Yass to give him about half a billion. He's purely transactional, and his religion is himself, with money.
Anytime I see Club for Growth involved I run the other way. They are conservative in name only, i.e., they are market fundamentalists who mostly have no interest in cultural matters.
They're another timely reminder that pretty much all billionaires, and wanna-be billionaires, have almost no interest in cultural matters - just growing their bank accounts, by fair means or foul.
A more honest name for the gang would be "Club for Tax Cuts" or "Club for Worker Suppression". The only growth their program aids is their own bottom line.
Thanks for referencing the NYT op ed by Caldwell. He writes regularly on the Spectator and is always extremely insightful.
The Biden platform, as explained at the SOTU (which was more a campaign rally) made it clear the US is all about Ukraine, Abortion, Illegal Immigration and demonizing "His predecessor". After he finished I thought there is no way America can last if thats the direction he wants to lead it.
None of us can predict the future, but I just feel it in my bones that the US cannot keep on this trajectory. It's not worth it.
Re: not valuing the children. This seems obvious to the crowd here, but you have to understand that the "trans the kids" folks actually believe that they value the kids more than normies do because... feelings. They truly believe it and they truly believe that you are a bigot if you don't believe it.
The violence of their opinions -- and the comments section-- are the scariest of all. If these folks had to go milk cows or harvest something or build something, they would be less opinionated. To quote Solon: "Over-sufficiency generates violence, whenever great prosperity attends those humans whose minds are not well-ordered." In fact, the overall theme of this is old news. It's all there in Herodotus Bk 1, which is why I believe it should be required reading as a senior in high school if not before.
While the new article by sociologist James Davison Hunter can be dropped anywhere in Rod's comments section, I guess this is as good a time and place as any. It's really great about America's main problem, foreign or domestic:
My wife (who works in intl development) points out that there is already a huge backlash across Africa and other parts of the developing world in direct response to US and Western nagging (and more) about LGBTQ issues - governments there are passing strong anti-LGBTQ laws, effectively telling US State and the rest of us to go **** ourselves. So not only is repurposing our entire focus overseas on woke/LGBTQ annoying and shortsighted, it's actually having the precise opposite effect of what was intended. As always, great job.
Makes me think of Bush II et al.'s notion that every person in the whole world is just secretly an American waiting to be set free.
Makes me think of Daenerys Targaryen, who thought she should free every slave through war in a distant land, and bring democracy. She meant well. *
*other than the end, when she was "not herself"
By the end, she sure was exceptional at liberating people . . . from their mortal coils.
Har! Thought you'd spot the inconsistency in my analogy. Nope, in the end, GWB didn't succumb to hereditary madness. But seriously, when I first met GRRM in 1998 he was warning exactly about stuff like this, long before Iraq. Then we go and do it.
Are you sure it wasn't hereditary madness? If another Bush ever became president (*shudder*), I feel like he too might not be able to resist the possibly epigenetic urge to go play with the Middle East.
Also, I read an inadvertently hilarious thing about how Martin is mad that his fans worry he'll die before he finishes the books.
Well....I guess I'm just an independent thinker who disagrees with virtually everyone here on the subject of GWB, but I'm brave (i.e., I'll say what I think)...I think Bush was naive and well meaning. We didn't hesitate to free Germany for democracy, that was his frame of reference.
I would really like to read the inadvertently hilarious thing about Martin - any links? As for me, one of the biggest fans, I'm not one bit worried - I feel reasonably certain he will pass before putting out another book, though he may live on for quite a while. - - Btw, I think there was a recent attempt at cancellation after George saluted some past great sci fi writers that the woke no longer like at an awards ceremony.
One of the concerns about TikTok is that it has an outsized effect on what and how younger people think. Even on just a very basic level it's a further destroyer of attention span.
If only it was that easy.
I don't think anyone should have a smart phone unless absolutely needed. They are a perfect example of a luxury turned into a convenience and then a necessity (or at least a perceived one).
I'd say that it has become a necessity by now because our holistic environment has been built around the assumption that people have one. it's not as easy as just opting out on a strictly individual basis; that's sort of like saying a car isn't necessary while living in the suburbs.
I've never had one and don't plan to unless they become the only option. Opting out from the beginning was likely easier than getting hooked then trying to opt back out.
I'm young and live in a city, and my job requires steady remote access to e-mail. That's what I mean: now this is a professional expectation, so the only way to opt out would be to also decline any forms of employment that require it.
Anyway, the broader point is simply that when your environment assumes that you have a smartphone, to not have one is practically to operate with a handicap. You would need to build your entire lifestyle around not having one, make that the top priority.
I haven't got a computer, a tablet, or a TV, but I do have a phone. Smartphones didn't exist until I was 55, by which time I'd long since realized my level and form of corruption.
What I could never abide in the near decade before I got a phone was the sight of a group of people, each magnetized by the glowing screen. I swore I'd never become one of them, and I never have.
I went for a long time without a computer -- about 7 years -- and I have a TV but I use it for DVD's only. Do I miss out on some things? Sure. But I'm much happier remaining minimally connected.
I like to keep Facebook activated, then not to go to it for many weeks. I like to fancy this upsets some intelligence of some sort.
1. The entire Android system is designed to capture and sell your information. That it's a function phone operating system is a by-product.
2. When possible, I use web shortcuts on my phone instead of apps; the security of a web page can be controlled better.
The question is just which government.
Although given what we've learned about the Pentagon's ability to simply purchase data from ad exchanges and learn a lot about us, it's hard to imagine the CCP hasn't done the same.
America! America! America!
The very clear and obvious attempt by the BRICS to found an alternative to the North American/Western European economic and political order must be taken more seriously by the policy elites. If China truly succeeds in establishing an alternative to the dollar's reserve status (questionable, given China's own potential instability as an authoritarian regime), we will lose a significant means of policy leverage. The blindness of our elites in the moral narcissism, however, is likely going to keep them blind to these very practical concerns as well.
Remove the "S" from BRICS? It stands for South Africa, right? which is quickly on its way to failed statehood. Unless the Chinese decide to recolonize it.
The "S" can be repurposed. Saudi Arabia is now a member, for instance.
It’s not only the Chinese who are motivated to establish a new reserve-type currency. The prospect of a “multipolar” world which is not subject to U.S. use of the dollar as a lever of power appeals to more and more countries. And another part of the appeal of BRICS is that the leading powers that started it reject interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. But the relative size of the Chinese economy certainly puts it in a leadership role and one might reasonably wonder how the Chinese view the endgame.
Is the Chinese goal to become the new hegemon of the world, or at least of the non-Western part of it? Maybe, but I doubt it. Nothing in Chinese history, philosophy, or culture suggests that the Chinese want to remake the rest of the world into China’s image. China may aspire to economic dominance. It may achieve economic dominance even without necessarily intending to do so, but that doesn’t mean it will rely on, or impose, cultural and societal change in other countries with which it deals.
I would advise strongly skepticism about the Chinese economy. Polite lies have been standard in that nation since the days of emperors demanding only good news from their servants
And China is tied too tightly to the US to become an independent hegemon
Well, what do you make of China's massive investments across Africa and (increasingly) Latin America? It appears to be engaging in a kind of neo-colonial enterprise in these regions. Its Belt and Road initiative seems designed to manage whatever economic hegemony it can achieve. As for the polite lies, things appear to have worked well enough in many ways, although your point is validated heavily by the way they handled (or are still handling) COVID.
I mentioned this is a comment below.
Whereas in contrast, America's "evangelism" has produced great resentment around the world and deservedly won us many enemies who might not have minded our economic dominance alone.
China has a history of wanting to be the center of the world, "The Middle Kingdom". It likes being acknowledged as being of utmost importance, the prime nation. It doesn't actually have a cultural history of wanting to conquer other areas.
In the end, China would love being the top nation of the world, but would reject being the "World's Policeman".
china might not one to be the world's policeman, but the recipients of China's Belt and Road money are starting to realize China has become their landlord. Chinese spending abroad is not exactly philanthropic in nature, and foreigners have discovered that when they take Chinese money they enserf themselves to Beijing's financial interests to the detriment of their own.
It was always a soft enslavement. China just wants to be honored. America has been far worse, forcing globohomo on client nations as well as causing client nations to open up their markets to American control.
As far as I am concerned this "globohomo" crap is BS on stilts, less real than old Baba Yaga and her spinning house on chicken's feet.
Of course you think that, JonF311. No one is surprised. Or cares.
It's not, Jon. It's easy to overstate, but it's not. It's on the record that what finally turned Mutti against Putin was his supposed meanness to gays. (For the record, I know someone with the languge who spent time in Russia within the past seven years and gays do their thing with discretion--it's Pussy Riot that goes to jail.) It would be folly to say that it is largely anti-anti-gay prejudice that fuels the animus against Putin, but to discount it is not to understand who our rulers are. According to Michael Beschloss, Orban is "brutal" because you can't give how-to blowjob manuals to elementary school kids in Hungary.
All true, but I would except Africa where the presence of any money at all is likely regarded as a plus, whatever the strings attached may be.
There is a history of anti-Chinese pogroms in SE Asia, and I can imagine that the new Chinese military could be used to stop such violence should it reoccur.
Oddly, China has never really done much about Chinese after they leave. I doubt China would ever do something about it militarily.
It's not odd at all, they simply lacked the capability. That's all. A State department China expert I knew told me that the Chinese diaspora has always been seen in China as a matter of interest. And if China were to change course and move to a more imperial stance, anti-Chinese pogroms would be a handy excuse.
OTOH China did side with the Khmer Rouge while they massacred ethnic Chinese. Then again, that regime did kill 50-90 million Chinese in their own country. So a principled stand by China is a real long shot.
South of China itself the Chinese diaspora is very much like, and very much regarded as, the Jews are the West. Bankers, merchants, educated, endogamous, and well hated.
I've been reading a lot of the late Canadian political philosopher George Grant recently. He was making a conservative case against American empire way back in the 60's, viewing first hand how Canada was losing its independence to U.S. influence.
Those of us who over the years have leaned paleo-con or trad-con have been well aware of these things for a long time. Paul Gottfried, for instance, has been writing since the early 2000's about the U.S. exportation of PoMo multi-culti. What Todd and Caldwell are saying isn't really new, therefore, but it's excellent that it's getting some currrent attention.
"What Todd and Caldwell are saying isn't really new, therefore, but it's excellent that it's getting some currrent attention."
It's like a forest fire. At first, maybe no one notices, but then a few people can smell a wisp of smoke, and then, little by little, the smoke thickens, and so on and so forth, until the flames become evident, first in the distance, and then closer and closer.
Caldwell has faultless table manners, so it gets him an entry to the Times. But, no, none of this is new.
PoMo?
Postmodern.
many decades ago US campuses fell to the radical left. The current skirmishes around campuses (and the larger culture), are in my opinion simply battles. The radical left won the war after leaving the academy victorious to then become dominant in the institutions. The west as a whole is now trudging along to becoming what the radical left wants it to be. There may be buyers remorse after the left becomes fully dominant. But can the west recover? Seems doubtful to me. I hope I'm wrong.
The classical text in this regard is Allan Bloom's account in COTAM of what went down at Cornell in 1968. It's not necessary to go all the way to Strauss-land with him to be compelled by his narration.
I remember reading his The Closing of the American Mind in 1987. I've always found him an inspiration.
Bloom was surprised by the success of COTAM and his circumscribed fame in literary circles, unfortunately his lifestyle took the bloom off his career.
I can tell you where I was when I started reading it. On a bench in Central Park, looking south toward the Plaza over The Pond. I thought, wow, maybe something will give." What hopes.
I have been convinced for a long while now that we are living in the death spasms of the Fields of Flanders. Until then the traditions of the West held but a fundamental break, that possibly would never have happened during and after WWI. The decadence was there but it was also being contested and held back.
With Trump downplaying the threat posed by TikTok, a site with connections to the Chinese Communist Party, get ready to hear his die hard supporters talk about how great TikTok is and how conservatives shouldn't be worried about it at all.
Why GOP? Why?
Trump is so flawed and the architect of his own demise. Too bad his opponents just don't flatter him and he will give them every thing they want. Maybe we are lucky that they don't.
There are ZERO communists in China, notwithstanding what somebody labels himself. China's is a market driven, free-market, fascist economy, operated on the principle of the hive. All policy is directed to the benefit of the Chinese people/nation in aggregate. There's no room for Marxist nonsense in this scheme.
Re: All policy is directed to the benefit of the Chinese people/nation in aggregate.
Uh, no. File that with "the withering away of the state". Chinese policy is directed to the benefit of the oligarchs running the show in China-- hardly an unusual fact, or limited to China.
"Why GOP? Why?"
Money. A major GOP donor is deeply invested in Tiktok and China.
It doesn't help that Trump has a grudge against Mark Zuckerberg, so he doesn't want to see Facebook benefit from the potential loss of Tiktok.
These people don't care about us, but somehow their supporters are dead set on believing they do.
Last night Bill and I watched the Joe Dante film "The Second Civil War". He made it for HBO in 1997. We got our copy via the interlibrary loan.
Wow. Just Wow. The world is falling apart. The U.S. is falling apart and overwhelmed. The state of Idaho has already accepted over 1 million refugees and won't accept anymore leading to the crisis.
Watch it twice to catch everything. They could never make this film today, emphasizing racial and cultural strife (Mexican separatists bomb the Alamo!). It's very equal-opportunity, too.
Better catch "The Second Civil War" now, while you can still find a copy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Civil_War
Why do empires fail? Ignorance, hubris, military over-reach, financial weakness and mismanagement, lack of societal cohesion, gross incompetence and lack of accountability… . It’s easy to recognize these same factors at play in today’s America. And, as we all know, the true state of the United States is probably best described as a country in decline, perhaps even steep decline. Moreover, neither political party recognizes the seriousness of the moment, much less offers a path forward. We do indeed live in perilous times. My best guess is that the next serious financial crisis will weaken the United States to a degree that it will be obvious to even the most blind among us that we are on the precipice of collapse. We will either do what is necessary to address our problems or our lives will indeed become nasty, brutish, and short.
I tend to agree but I also know that a declining nation can muddle through the decline. Think of America's strengths. We have a tremendous agricultural output. We have a somewhat vibrant economy. We have easily the strongest military in the world. We can not be invaded by conventional armies but only by illegal aliens wishing to consume the scraps of the American economy.
"If the civilizational order fails at a Roman Empire level, well, most of us will likely still be here. What then? How will we live? How will we get through it until renaissance is possible?"
We'll do it the way they did in the "Dark Ages" (which weren't that dark, actually) - living in smaller enclaves and societies, with special people devoting themselves to maintaining the old learning and beliefs, watching out for marauders, and concentrating on what humans have for thousands of years: feeding / clothing / housing ourselves and our children.
Somewhere, a Byzantium will continue. (It did at the time, and lasted well into the 15th century.)
Sooner or later, the marauders will settle down, and the people who survive will join their enclaves to form kingdoms (for want of a better word).
Chaos never lasts forever: humans like living in stable, safe groups. A new culture will form. For those of us who, should the fall happen soon, and will never live to see the next renaissance, we will be no different than those who died in the late 500's AD, to whom St. Gregory the Great (Pope Gregory I) preached to "us, upon whom the end of the world has come", "Strengthen yourself to bear with the bad; If we are offspring of God's chosen ones, we must learn to live as they did." And begins with the example of Job.
Except they didn't live under the all-seeing eye of technology, where there is nowhere to hide. I don't know how we will survive in small, stable groups with government-controlled digital currencies.
Barter economies
Oh, so that's why they're coming for the cows. . . .
Cash and barter. That's what worked then. Old Roman coins circulated for long after Rome stopped minting them. Eventually, the new kingdoms developed and minted their own currencies.
The whole point of digital currency is to eliminate cash, and they will come down hard on bartering. They want complete control, and we will all suffer. This level of control has never been seen before.
If Western Civilization collapses, as so many of Rod's references say it is going to, then there will be no central control, and the grid will have gone down. It'll be cash and barter. Pro-tip - start stashing cash, but don't make it 100s or 50s or even 20s. 1s, 5s, and 10s will be more useful.
I've pointed out before that eliminating cash is not feasible- in part because we need a backup for when the grid goes down (inevitably it will here and there now and then)-- and because the People On High have not-so-savory uses for cash too.
Scary fact: after the demographic crash of the 500s new coinage all but disappears from the archaeological record. And from analysis of pollutants in lake sediments it appears that across the Old World no one was bothering to mine and refine silver for almost a century. The depopulated world with barely any sort of long range trade was able to make due with the old coinage for a long time.
Yes, they were.
Governments controlled the minting of coin even in the Dark Ages.
Thank you!
"While Mr. Todd is, again, not judgmental on sexual matters..." Why is he not judgmental on sexual matters? Is he fearful of being judged and of being unpopular? Are intellectual matters more important than sexual matters? Why are we all so resolute in our "non-judgmentalness" on sexual matters? Herein lies the problem that we face...There I said it. Have at it.
Let he who is without sin.....? Saying what is right and wrong is one thing but being judgmental (in a negative sense of that word) is another. - - There, I had at it :)
OK, we may have different semantic understanding of the word "judgmental" and that may be in play here. But I think Caldwell's semantics might have been closer to what I am thinking here.
Well, for one thing it gives him a bigger audience.
There are many who have not yet made the connection between so-called "sexual liberation" and globalist homogeneity, possibly due to their ideological commitment (examined or unexamined) to the former. Maybe Todd is one of these. (Recall that Christopher Lasch was criticized and ultimately ignored for making such connections back in the 80s and 90s.)
As he said in an interview, he's a French secularist, so he doesn't care what people get up to in bed.
Yes, I know, I read the article, and therein lies the intentionality of my comment. By being above it, the intellectual and secularist, refuses to grapple with it at all, let alone make a judgment. In theoretical/computational science, this is known as assuming away the problem. You just refuse to deal with it because it is too hard. But that is why we are where we are in the West. Let's not dwell on homosexuality, instead let's consider late-term abortion. When we discuss late-term abortion in the abstract, which is what we mostly do no matter which side of the divide one is on, we relieve ourselves of having to deal with the thing in itself. We don't deal with the details of how an abortion is done, what is done to the baby, the body parts being evacuated from the uterus, the effect on the woman, the effect on the attending health professionals etc. As such we can "kick" the idea around like a metaphorical football. And the practice continues because we have abstracted it from reality and then we do not judge it from a whole and real perspective. This leads to grievous results. The same is true of our treatment of homosexuality...but what the heck.
This argument doesn't take history into consideration, either the history of ideas or people's own personal history. In a way, it's similar to the wokester practice of judging people from the past by 21st C. standards. You should not ascribe to malice what can be explained by ignorance. Can we say that Todd should know better? Yes. And maybe sometime he will. But why throw the baby out with the bathwater in the meantime?
(1) We should do what we can to prevent decline, awareness and action, but; (2) We should not assume that decline, which in inevitable in the long run, is going to fully happen in our lifetimes. Rome was 500 years in it's decay. (3) There is a mental bias from consuming news. Yes, we should consume news, but the only thing newsworthy is the bad/concerning stuff. We miss much of the good.
People, spiritual peace and effectiveness is not a product of depression and certain-defeatism. We don't really know what will happen. Let's do our best and also admit we just do not know the outcome for certain.
I think saying "doom is certain" is no more likely to bring the change we hope for than saying what changes we need to make and how this will help people. How about - "this hurts us and doom may result but lets try this....."
To a much greater than most people are willing to admit, history is due to forces beyond human control. That's true in individual lives; it's true in the lives of nations. Though human hubris quails at the notion that we aren't running the show.
I think that confirmation bias is real, and that you are talking wisdom here. I also think that people experiencing personally difficult times like to project them onto society at large—and if you wanna look for bad things in the world, then you won't be disappointed, so it turns into a self-feeding loop. (On that I speak from experience.)
I'm with you on this. The guy predicting collapse can't lose. If it happens tomorrow, he gets to say "See! I told you so!" If it doesn't happen in his lifetime, he can still always claim it's going to happen.
But then pity poor Al Gore, whom I believe told us New York City was going to be underwater by now.
For those who can access WSJ, "The Billionaire Keeping TikTok on Phones in the U.S.
Financier Jeff Yass made a big bet on the app, and he’s a top donor to lawmakers who support it."
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/jeff-yass-tiktok-bytedance-ban-congress-15a41ec4
And, for those who can't access the article, Axios:
One potential factor at play is Trump's newly repaired relationship with billionaire Jeff Yass, who has a huge financial stake in Bytedance and has spent millions backing lawmakers who support TikTok.
"Days before his TikTok reversal, Trump publicly praised Yass for inviting him to a retreat held by Club for Growth, a powerful conservative group that also opposes banning the app.
Yass had previously donated $4.9 million to Vivek Ramaswamy, who last year became the only Republican presidential candidate to join TikTok — an app he once called "digital fentanyl."
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/09/tiktok-ban-trump-republicans?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top
Trump will side with anyone who will give / loan him money. I'm sure he's planning on getting Yass to give him about half a billion. He's purely transactional, and his religion is himself, with money.
Anytime I see Club for Growth involved I run the other way. They are conservative in name only, i.e., they are market fundamentalists who mostly have no interest in cultural matters.
They're another timely reminder that pretty much all billionaires, and wanna-be billionaires, have almost no interest in cultural matters - just growing their bank accounts, by fair means or foul.
A more honest name for the gang would be "Club for Tax Cuts" or "Club for Worker Suppression". The only growth their program aids is their own bottom line.
Thanks for referencing the NYT op ed by Caldwell. He writes regularly on the Spectator and is always extremely insightful.
The Biden platform, as explained at the SOTU (which was more a campaign rally) made it clear the US is all about Ukraine, Abortion, Illegal Immigration and demonizing "His predecessor". After he finished I thought there is no way America can last if thats the direction he wants to lead it.
None of us can predict the future, but I just feel it in my bones that the US cannot keep on this trajectory. It's not worth it.
Caldwell is published by the Claremont Review, which I have just subscribed. He's an excellent analytical thinker and writer.
Re: not valuing the children. This seems obvious to the crowd here, but you have to understand that the "trans the kids" folks actually believe that they value the kids more than normies do because... feelings. They truly believe it and they truly believe that you are a bigot if you don't believe it.
The violence of their opinions -- and the comments section-- are the scariest of all. If these folks had to go milk cows or harvest something or build something, they would be less opinionated. To quote Solon: "Over-sufficiency generates violence, whenever great prosperity attends those humans whose minds are not well-ordered." In fact, the overall theme of this is old news. It's all there in Herodotus Bk 1, which is why I believe it should be required reading as a senior in high school if not before.
While the new article by sociologist James Davison Hunter can be dropped anywhere in Rod's comments section, I guess this is as good a time and place as any. It's really great about America's main problem, foreign or domestic:
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/missing-character/articles/the-denial-of-the-moral-as-lived-experience
Whew! That is a great share. Much appreciated, RC.
This is why it is so scary. Imagine the best, most effective Evangelicals you've ever met, only for trans and sexualities rather than for Jesus.