Basically, what your own statement boils down to is that Finland is in the same boat as China. So, it's a case of the proverbial kettle calling the pot black. :smile: — Apollodorus

No, that Finland has bleak demographics is a reality, but I'm not forecasting my country to be an economic juggernaut that will surpass others. So I'm clueless why you are thinking this is a "case of the proverbial kettle calling the pot black". The simple fact is that in order for China to surpass the US economy, demographics is a real issue, which you cannot simply deny. It simply does have an effect, because in order to take the position of the US, China has to grow.

Still, in my view the far bigger obstacle is the CCP and the authoritarian streak that has taken China during the era of Xi Jingping. Central planning can go only so far. Central planners cannot anticipate what are the new growth sectors will be during the next decade or two. That the CCP put down harshly the protest movement shows that in the end the Chinese authorities don't care if they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (as Hong Kong is a huge economic powerhouse).

I've often assumed that to gain absolute power in a political sense would likely require deceit, violence and possibly murder to achieve and to remain there. — Tom Storm

Assuming that the whole society is built on absolute power both the power elite and the people are OK with the existing institutions. There are countries like Saudi-Arabia ...or North Korea. Or even Monaco, actually. Power transition can also happen peacefully.

In fact when you think it, hereditary transfer of power is one basic way to avoid the pitfall of a violent political struggle once the absolute ruler dies.

(The happy Korean family that North Korea is known for: Kim il-Sung with his son Kim Jong-il and his wife Kim Jong-Suk.)

So the kinds of people that get to absolute power are likely to be compromised from the get go. — Tom Storm

In a way, yes. The absolute power is usually rationalized with the country and society being under a threat, either external or domestic or both. When you don't have this fear of everything collapsing otherwise, why wouldn't the leader share power or delegate issues to others?

Just look at Russia or China. Both countries fear that the state will fall apart if "Western liberal democracy" is given a chance and that it is a conspiracy of the West, that wants this to happen.

I suspect there is a broader point that people who never have anyone say no to them might eventually become intoxicated by that power and take awful liberties with other's liberties. — Tom Storm

This is true, but perhaps we should think just why this kind of power is given to them in the first place.

Remember the full quote from Lord Acton, which answers your question. It refers to men and politics, not deities. And the quote is tends to corrupt not always corrupts. Although it looks like absolute power seems doomed to malfeasance. — Tom Storm

I think the major problem is when absolute power is obtainable, when there aren't existing safety valves to prevent a person to have absolute power (like institutional separation of powers), then the competition for this power can become extremely ugly. And this corrupts power, because people will kill each other for that power. Because why not? Once you have absolute power, that you killed people to gain that position doesn't matter.

Just ask yourself, just how many absolute dictators or monarchs have been killed? And how many of these people with absolute power have killed people in order to sustain their position? Many.

Hence, having "absolute power" in a human society has meant that actually the power of the authority has been weak and vulnerable.

A good reply. This cartoon from Gary Larson came to mind from what you said:

I thought their culture must truly be dead if it did not fit my prejudicial, uninformed and wholly biased view. - I don't hold romantic views of Indians. They are humans and I'm no big fan of humans. — James Riley

If only things would be this way, that people would hold native peoples as humans and not either as "noble savages" or just as victims of Western imperialism. Yet those prejudicial, uninformed views do dominate. Either you have the classical derogatory (racist) views or then the more woke ideas, which also can go into nonsense just from a totally different path.

If those cowboy hats, boots and Wranglers are somehow viewed as wrong by somebody, I would say the Sami, one of the last indigenous and nomadic people in Europe, have even bigger problem with the dominant narrative. And that is that the narrative about indigenous people has this dichotomy between the indigenous people and white people, the settlers. Because this is the dominant narrative, the Sami activists simply have to adapt to this narrative and have to refer to Finns, Swedes and Norwegians as the white "settlers". The problem is that Sami, being a Fenno Ugric people, are in the American racial terms simply white. There is absolutely no way you can spot the difference of a Sami from a Finn from some outward "racial" difference. Perhaps an Udmurt could be recognized from having more likely red hair, but even that doesn't count for some reason as a racial difference (as these racial definitions are genuinely invented). Bit of a problem when a female Sami activist looks like a stereotypical Finnish or Swedish girl with blue eyes and blonde hair in an environment where intersectionality and white priviledge are so important and it is assumed that all indigenous people have a similar story with the European settlers.

But I guess the same way even the proletariat, the working class, was earlier romanticized by leftist activists in to being something that the actual people weren't.

Yes. With a a microscopic population of 5.5 million, fertility rate of about 1.37, and average age of 40+, Finns are definitely in the best position to point the finger at China! I don't think I will bother with your other comments .... :smile: — Apollodorus

LOL!!!

Have to say that has to be the strawman argument of the month! I mean talk about not refuting anything of the original argument. Yet actually your comparison only shows how dire the issue is to China. So thanks for taking another dismal example to compare how bad things are in China:

Btw, ALL European countries are below 2,0 fertility rate for those who don't know it. Yet Chinese fertility rate at 1,3 and hence EVEN LOWER than in Finland, now at 1,44, and still higher even if we'd take that 1,37 you refer to. (see here).

And China doesn't have similar net immigration. So if for Finland the peak of population (by the article given by @Apollodorus) would be in 2031. How are things in China? Some fresh news articles about it:

(The Guardian, 23rd Nov 2021) China’s birthrate has plummeted to the lowest level seen in official annual data covering the period from 2020 back to 1978, as the government struggles to stave off a looming demographic crisis.

Or worse:

(Korean Times, Dec 6th 2021)China’s population to peak in 2021 as demographic turning point has already arrived, threatening to disrupt Beijing’s economic ambitions

China's population is expected to peak in 2021 and fall steadily in the foreseeable future in a turning point for the country's population trajectory, according to James Liang.

Liang told the South China Morning Post on Thursday that the number of births across the country fell 20 per cent to about 10 million in 2021, citing published data from local Chinese authorities, while the number of deaths could be more than 10 million this year.

“That means the size of China’s population has peaked much earlier than previously expected,” said Liang, who has been one of the country’s loudest voices calling for pro-birth policies over the years.

Or even worse:

(Reuters, Dec 3 2021) - China may be downplaying how fast its population is shrinking, and a recent policy to promote three-child families has poor chances to improve birth rates, a fertility expert told the Reuters Next conference on Friday.

Fuxian Yi, senior scientist in the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Wisconsin, said he estimated that China’s 2020 population was 1.28 billion rather than the 1.41 billion census number reported and that fertility rates were lower than reported.

Yi estimates that China's population has been shrinking since 2018.

Of course, we will see quite quickly (in a decade or so) if the above articles are true or not. But I guess decreasing population NOW is worse than possibly decreasing population in ten years. Of course, the Chinese officials will likely hide this statistic as they hide nearly everything starting from a virus out brake that caused a pandemic. But things can be kept hidden only so long.

So I would urge Americans just to keep their cool. The only real worry is that the local dictator will do something extremely stupid (like invade Taiwan) if the domestic problems get really bad. But still I wouldn't say it is imminent.

The root of the current tensions between the West and Russia is EU and NATO expansion aiming to seize control of Russian resources. — Apollodorus

This indeed is what the siloviks have and the KGB has said all along. Those evil Westerners!!!

(And people fall for this)

The bottom line is even if China isn't able or willing to use military action to get what it wants in the near future, in the coming decades will it be able to use it's economic and/or military might to get whatever it wants and be able to eventually even push the US and her allies into a corner and make it so that the rest of world has to allow China to whatever it wants and eventually allow China to surpass the US as the world's major superpower? — dclements

Very long sentence.

Short answer: No.

A bit why this is...

1) If mainland China would have the same per capita income as Taiwan, it would have surpassed long ago the GDP of the US. Actually the Chinese economy would be then twice that of the US. Now it's still far smaller. This is the crucial factor: Mainland China is controlled by the CCP who think they are doing achieving true Marxism. Really, don't mind what people here say, that's what the CCP themselves say. They really believe that they have finally molded Marxism to work.

Hence they shoot themselves in the foot, because planned authoritarian economies can go just so far. When you look at Chinese history, they have been able to do this in many occasions. The biggest obstacle for China is that they are controlled by communists. A China that would remember Chiang Kai Sek would be different (what you can see from the tiny Island nation).

2) Never underestimate the effects of the disastrous "one child"-policy. Having been totally unable to fathom that higher prosperity lowers child birth naturally, the Chinese authorities with this drastic actions have dug a huge hole for themselves as the country will age. This is a severe problem for China. Just look at India: they never had limits to population growth and now it isn't a problem.

3) China will be facing hard financial issues in the future. You can only build so much, even if that building program has been something that has never been seen in World history prior to this day.

4) Finally, do note that this discourse is extremely American. It's the Americans that see any growing country as a possible rival that will take their place. Earlier it was of course the Soviet Union. Were they scary. Then it was Japan, remember? Oh, how Japan was taking over the US and how Japanese companies were buying the gems of American industry and commerce. This is a discourse that is promoted in the US in order to try to get Americans to go with the idea of them being a Superpower.

P.S. No culture is stagnant. They either change or die. Every single one. — James Riley

Exactly.

If for example people don't have in ceremonies folk costumes from the 19th Century (and some from the 18th Century) doesn't mean that Finnish culture is dying. Culture isn't just remembering the past, but adapting to the present and creating something new in one's own way. Besides, there has always been the a lot of influences across cultures. Good luck trying to separate which Nordic traditional folk costumes comes from which country. They actually are quite similar.

Native Americans aren't like that. Their cultures are gone. There's a really sad Bob Dylan song about it. — frank

Well @frank, if you have Native American heritage, links to them or would have studied them, that might sound more credible. I think Robert Zimmermann's ancestry is Jewish from Eastern Europe.

I think one has to put these things into perspective.

My country compared to Europe is like the state of Minnesota compared to the US. I'm sure there are actors, writers and intellectuals from Minnesota, but they are a small fraction to the "cultural" people of all the US. And this shows actually that when we talk of American culture, be it Hollywood or Broadway in New York or whatever, that there are 331 million Americans, some 64 times more people than there are Finns. So actually it's no wonder that the US can have vibrant cultural centers, yet the fact is that there are only a few of them is the real question. There being the "West Coast" and the "East Coast" and the in between being "Fly over country" doesn't sound actually so vibrant to me.

Just compare motion pictures. In my country about 30 motion pictures, long films, are produced annually. Hollywood produces about 600 (earlier perhaps 800) motion pictures. Compared to the population (64 times smaller) Finland produces a lot more films than Hollywood. A way lot more. Cultural activity simply doesn't go similarly with the growth of the population. In fact I could argue that some "cultural scenes" can dominate larger populations and basically end with less cultural activity in a bigger population.

There are about 2,9 million Native Americans in the US belonging to 574 federally recognized tribes. That's less than 1 percent of the US population and equivalent to the population of Kansas. The largest community I think is the Navajo with 332 000 people belonging to this ethnic group. That is of similar size of the city of Corpus Christi in Texas.

So perhaps we have to look at how vibrant culture Corpus Christi has, how many famous artists, writers and intellectuals have come from there? Great if you can mention one. I'm sure there are, but that comparison is a good reality check of how much unique culture can be sustained with a few hundred thousand people. Some comparing the "cultural scene" in Corpus Christi to NY or LA might think the city is quite dead. Yet it's likely not. So to argue that the Native Americans have lost their culture is quite unfair. There are so few of them.

That was a call for reinforcement of Native traditions. That's a lost cause. You can take my word for it, or believe what you want. :razz: — frank

I do believe it isn't a lost cause. The only thing is that actual culture cannot be just remembering the past, something new has to be created also.

(Navajo language likely won't die yet.)


It only puts a bigger burden if there are fewer people. For example, there are only 10 000 Sami people in Finland. Try upholding an own culture (music, literature, art) with that. But with even a few hundred thousand it's totally possible. Icelandic language and culture will surely prevail. I simply cannot fathom that somehow they would forget their language and start talking something else.

It's been devastating to the people. That's what I was thinking about. — frank

If you haven't lived where the combat has taken place, it has been quite normal. Remember that this basically has been now a border war fought with limited resources. For instance air power hasn't been used by Russia.

(For example Donetsk looks quite ordinary, even if the front lines are close)

Yes. Although I'm aware that my time sense has been warped a little by my adventures into geological history and the history of the Bronze Age. I got so used to diving into the past that the present moment started seeming far away.

It gets me in trouble with climate change angst too. I realize that a thousand years isn't really that long. — frank

1000 years? Sure, in a 1000 years not much is consistent and doesn't change. But yes, I think the time range of one millennium isn't the most preferable one when tackling the problems of the present societies.

There isn't any Native American nationalism. — frank

Really? How can you say that?

Some very prominent Native writers and intellectuals such as Vine Deloria Jr., Taiaiake
Alfred, Jeff Corntassel, David E. Wilkins, Glenn T. Morris, Tom Holm, Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, and Simon Ortiz have reflected on the concept of tribal sovereignty and self-determination and, in order to achieve self-reliance and self-confidence, have called Native peoples to return to the positive energy of Indigenous epistemologies that is desperately missing from Native communities. Along the way, for instance,

Ortiz, in Woven Stone, concurs:
We need to insist on Native American self-sufficiency, our heritage of cultural resistance, and advocacy for a role in international Third-World de-colonizing struggles, including recognizing and unifying with our indigenous sisters and brothers in the Americas of the Western Hemisphere.

Thus, academically-based and community-grounded Native intellectuals and writers alike are expressing the need for Native societies to restore the health and prosperity of the people using historical Native ways of governing.

It's not only the Navajo that call themselves the Navajo Nation, but with their own jurisdiction, administration and police force, they can call themselves rightly a nation.

And I didn't say nationalism is inherently evil. That is your knee-jerk reaction — frank

Fair enough. But do note that the discussion started from Ukraine, a country that was invaded and has now for seven years fought a war with Russia. And if it was bad (nationalism) for them to defend their country? Yet I think we agree on this issue.

Oh no, you got personal, so I'll have to pull rank on ya. I'm from the Melting Pot. I am Assimilation Personified by virtue of my diverse genetics. — frank

So hopefully your country does promotes that diversity! There's a lot of countries where those of mixed heritage are left outside the political/ethnic/racial divide and have no place in the political discourse. And that is extremely sad.

I would argue that several countries have been able to successfully create that "Melting Pot" and create a universal culture in which people from different backgrounds can relate to. We naturally think of the US, but I'd argue that the Romans were successful in this too. A multicultural state can exist, but then there has to be created a very strong identity over the older identities. The British identity is the obvious example of this. How important this is seldom is acknowledged. That the EU has totally failed in this (which is obvious, because it has taken national identities and "nationalism" to be bad). The EU will never be something like the US, it's just a political union for which nobody actually is willing to give his or her life literally.

In a way, it's crucial for the state to uphold the "priviledges" of it's people: that you can be educated in the language that your family speaks, that you get service in the language you speak. That the Constitution and the government is made for you, not someone else. These are among the obvious "perks" of having an own state intended for you that we take for granted. We shouldn't forget that this isn't granted. These "priviledges" also give the reason why people would give their life to defend that state. No small matter for the existence of a nation, large or small.

. Is it worth killing to preserve it for a few more years? — frank

A few years? What are you talking about?

That is simply crazy. You think in a few years English language will just die out? Or is it just Finnish, Estonian, and other small languages that will "fizzle out", in a few more years? Do the Native Americans have a right to their language and culture? Are their demands for "nationalism" so bad, inherently evil? If your logical, I guess it would be so. Or do you just change the discourse when it's politically correct to do so?

But I guess with you the question is just what would you considered to be worth defending even with resorting to violence. This seems to be the typical ignorant attitude of someone who's own culture hasn't been under threat of possible extinction. So I guess for you culture, the language you speak and your heritage doesn't matter. It's all bad I guess.

That's some nationalistic values you have there: the grandeur of the state's legacy over the well being of the people? — frank

The grandeur in this case is of course the French state and the French language where prior there was a multitude of other different languages and cultures.

It was in 1790, barely a year after the Bastille was stormed, that the first ever linguistic survey of France took place. The Rapport Grégoire established that French was the sole language in only 15 of the 83 départements, and that over 12 million citizens – mainly in rural areas – couldn’t speak enough French to carry out a conversation, and that only 3 million people could speak French ‘properly’, with even fewer able to write it. In effect, Paris and its hinterland was virtually an isolated island of monolingual French speakers surrounded by a sea of regional languages.

French is the sole official language according to the second article of the French Constitution. Other languages spoken in the area, like Occitan, are now highly endangered. This hasn't happened because of the idleness of the previous speakers of those languages. The parents didn't just suddenly not teach their children the language. It naturally has been a crucial objective for the French state to create a uniform language and uniform French culture, because left with to the old the state of a true multiethnic country would be far more troublesome than the United Kingdom or Spain.

Language was to play a key role in this re-education of the French people. French, and French alone, was to be the language of freedom and the universal values embodied by the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme. While it may have, theoretically, been done in the spirit of equality and democracy – a national language ensured that all citizens had equal access to the benefits of the Revolution – the practical application of the policy and the language had a decidedly authoritarian bent.

And do note how you conquer lands, you don't take them just over, you mold the people of those conquered nations to be part of your starting from the language and culture they had. If you don't assimilate the people you have conquered, you are just asking for trouble in the future. Likely the state will just collapse when people don't think they belong to it. There aren't many Empires left these days.

So it's not nationalism I'm preaching here (or you are confusing the term), but you @frank might not understand that what you say might unintentionally be promoting imperialism.

Yeah but your descendants aren't going to care what your nationality was, or what language you spoke, or what you looked like, or what your religion was. It's all vanity. — frank

You really think so?

During the 100 year war the Burgundians favored surrender to England because France was suffering so much from the conflict. 1/3 of the arable land wasn't being farmed. 1/3 of the churches were empty, many of them robbed by French soldier/brigands.

I can't say they were wrong. — frank

Yep!

And there's no independent Burgundy anymore.

Do note that independent Burgundy was absorbed to French crown lands and the Belgian part to Habsburg posessions not long after that. Now only about 50 000 people do know to speak some Burgundian.

So with that kind of thinking, history will remember you and your people/country like this:

What type of people do you think make dictators?! — Tim3003

You perhaps think of the person, but I think of the people that support dictators. They are the more interesting case here, because it opens up a bit this discussion on a new level.

You see, those that crave for power and have egotist traits of a dictator, can actually be so smart that they do hold onto power, but do go along even with respecting the democratic rules. Then we won't call them dictators. Or we can have various states of emergencies, when for example marshal law is implemented. And then nations can get back to normality.

Of course he's weak. Dictators are driven far more by egotism than ability. — Tim3003

Let's just remember that Trump's self-coup failed. Trump is a bully, not an ideologue and certainly not a dictator, even if he loves them. Trump bet everything on Pence and getting Republicans to back him. He didn't order a state of emergency because of the "steal". I think that someone like general Michael Flynn would have gone through with a real self-coup like that. He sure has totally taken the alternate-reality propaganda to heart. Yet it's likely that even with that and the Trump putsch would have failed as badly as the August Coup of 1991 in the Soviet Union. Even if the Jan 6th crowd would have been a great image for doing a self-coup.

But what about the people who genuinely support a dictatorship? You seldom have everybody fearing for their life, then it would be quite a shaky support. So who are these people?

The type of people that in Greece could choose tyrants to lead them or in Rome those who supported Ceasar and then Augustus. Basically quite ordinary people who did have a say in politics (now the voters in general). Do note that people end up supporting dictators because for them the country seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. And because history has just one way it's gone, we can only guess what might have happened without those various states of emergency, when freedoms have been curbed and the authoritarian policies have been implemented.

I look around at the people I work with, arguably educated and literate, and listen to their spoken values and am appalled at the profound absence of thought processes and shallow values being yammered about. These are the educated voters, Bachelors and Masters degrees all around, and very little substance or critical thought to be found anywhere. — Book273

Usually it's a problem of motivation. Who cares? Elections happen very rarely and it's a vote among millions. But let's say their careers where on the line with the choice they made in the election booth (which btw. goes against the crucial anonymity of voting). If their candidate does do what he or she promises they keep their job, if he or she doesn't, they lose their job. Suddenly there would be a lot of interest to elections and many of your colleagues and they would follow politics.

Would Ukrainians be better off if they ended the war and surrendered to Russia? — frank

Would you do that if you it would be your country and not Ukraine?

From my country's experience it's not only that give make an acceptable and somewhat beneficial option to Russia, you also have to make it clear that the surrender option isn't happening and that the annexation option will simply be too costly. With those options being off the table, then the "Finlandization" option is the one Russia is happy with. But notice, only with those two options out of the question.

Or then you simply have to have nuclear deterrence. Of some sort. (Which the Ukrainians, btw, gave away thanks to promises from the US, UK and Russia in 1994.)

(Dismantling of the Ukrainian nuclear deterrence)

Meanwhile in Europe, sabre rattling:

Earlier the Ukrainian President was worried about a coup plot, six days ago:

Ukraine’s president has said intelligence services uncovered a plot involving a group of Russians and Ukrainians to overthrow his government next week.

Speaking at an hours-long press conference, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian intelligence had obtained audio recordings of the plotters discussing their plans, which he said involved tying to enlist the support of Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.

“We have challenges not only from the Russian Federation and possible escalation – we have big internal challenges. I received information that a coup d’etat will take place in our country on December 1-2,” Zelenskiy said.

Belarus teeming up with Russia:

The West realizes that if it sets off a conflict on the Russian border, Minsk won’t stand aside, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said at a Defense Ministry meeting on military security on Monday, according to the BelTA news agency.

"They understand perfectly well that if they once again start a war in Donbass or somewhere else on the border with Russia, Belarus won’t stand aside. And it’s clear whose side Belarus will take. They understand it, which is why they have begun to strengthen their northern border, the Ukrainian-Belarusian border. Although there is no reason to do it at the moment," Lukashenko pointed out. "Nevertheless, they are deploying troops there, making clear statements about it. It’s about approximately 8,000 troops at this stage," he added.

According to Lukashenko, "intense actions are underway around Russia under the assumption that it plans to attack Ukraine. "I don’t have information about Russia’s plans to attack Ukraine, while if such plans existed, the Belarusian military, me included, would have been aware of them," he said.

Biden administration sending a warning:

The Biden administration warned on Wednesday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would trigger “high impact” U.S. sanctions that would surpass any previously imposed on Moscow.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in the Latvian capital of Riga after meeting with his NATO counterparts, said Russia’s large-scale troop buildup on Ukraine’s border and other pressure tactics resembled steps Moscow took before it invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized the Crimean peninsula.

“Now, we’ve seen this playbook before in 2014, when Russia last invaded Ukraine. Then as now they significantly increased combat forces along the border. Then as now they intensified disinformation to paint Ukraine as the aggressor to justify pre-planned military action,” Blinken said.

But it remained unclear if Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to order an invasion, Blinken told reporters.

Sounds worrying? Well, let's hope that it's just like earlier people being extremely jittery. But of course, the war is still going on in Ukraine.

Without a doubt the closest country to having an actual ‘democracy’ on Earth is Switzerland. The thought of that system on a global scale fills me with dread not hope. — I like sushi

If you just copy-paste the Swiss system into an existing power structure in many countries, yes, that would be something to be dreaded. Or simply would tarnish the name of the Swiss model. Because having the institutions and system in name only wouldn't help many countries.

Hence it doesn't go like that. For example, Liberia has similar Constitution as the US, yet that hasn't prevented a military sergeant taking power and shooting the whole government (the story goes that he got the inspiration of making a coup when the President inspected the troops in pyjamas and bathrobe). The civil wars that the country has endured were gruesome.

It all comes to those institutions, how well the system operates, some basic educational level, social cohesion and, as Marx pointed out before Bill Clinton: it's the economy, stupid.

I think it's simply racist to think that some people (unlike others) would be incapable of having a democracy. It's the above mentioned things that have to work.

Do you all realize that bans in cyberspace are equivalent to capital punishment in the real world? — TheMadFool

Not for those that have been on the forum for one or two days.

For those with over 10k posts and years of participation, that may be the case...

if the person banned really wants to get back in, it’s realistic to assume they will. — Xtrix

And realistically speaking, likely they cannot change their ways and will get banned again. You aren't a cordial debater otherwise only to lose it totally at one specific issue.

Democracies are not kept in check by informed citizens, they are kept in check by powerful legal institutions and as well as various other rules and systems. — Judaka

This is true, but any government or regime has to have a support base. There simply has to be people who at least think that supporting the present leadership and system is better than the alternative. Otherwise the whole apparatus will come apart in a drop of a hat.

What when it's the government/state who is the actor who uses dubious methods? — baker

Shows only the integral weakness built into the regime. Why once in power, do you still have to attack others as viciously as before? Your showing your weakness. What your base actually would want is for you to do what you promised to do, simple as that. It's the populists dilemma: once in power, you are those "powers to be" that you have criticized. Hence if you want to follow that act and not keep your promises, you have to enlargen the "conspiracy" to the international level. Good luck with that. In the end you do have to have a support base and they have to be happy.

Yes, governments can control the media, but then they simply distort the political debate not to show the real opinion that there is. Going from verbal assault to physical assault is actually easy. Coming back from that isn't anymore. An authoritarian simply cannot know just how much popularity he has and going down that rabbit hole isn't actually a smart move.

The really smart move is to get the whole political class to follow your tune, and then you would have to stay quite silent, be above the political debate. Have perhaps someone below you be the lightning rod that can be replaced. You don't do that by ferociously attacking others.

Oh it's far more simple than you think! From the view of the government/state:

a) keep the economy robust and in good health.
b) provide the services the people want, starting with safety and listen to their demands.
c) Uphold transparency and keep corruption low.
d) basically keep the people happy.
e) and don't rest on your laurel's if you have reached the above. It's a constant struggle, and in the end the voters will likely just get bored with you and replace you with someone worse. At least people will then later note how good things were back in your time...

People who are content are difficult to get to be hostile at each other, ready to take the barricades. The criticism will be left to the true "fringe" or to the "intelligencia", which actually the latter is quite beneficial. Nothing works as well as honest open laughter when someone comes up with something outrageous. Being angry at them only turns on a conspiracist: remember, for him or her you are just the brainwashed sheeple.

If then everything is going to hell in a hand basket, then the vicious circle can be so bad there's not much to do. Might be worth noting to people who are important to you what is happening and how to prepare for even worse time. I think simply making a hilarious joke that tells the real truth in a funny short way spreads far better than demonizing the other side. For example, cartoons can be far more effective than a grotesque images filled with absolute hatred and loathing. That kind of propaganda turns people off, if they aren't already extremely angry about the issue. If people are truly really fed up with a politician and hate his or her guts, then by all means do make images of him or her as the worst of the worst. But then it's just incitement.

Where is geothermal? Where is tidal energy? When the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow there's trouble a'brewin. — jgill

Geothermal isn't a resource for every place,and so is tidal. They can assist, but basically one has to remember that energy production is and will be determined by demand and supply of today. The fact is that we can have those long term plans, but the economic situation of today has a huge impact of just what actually will happen.

Where are the fossil fuels, you should start with:

The price of coal:

Coal usage has rebounded in the past year, wiping out declines in 2020 and interrupting a decades-long downward trend of use in advanced economies.

The price of oil:



Although for renewables and alternatives it's basically good that fossil fuel prices are high in the long run, what we seem to have is going to be a possible energy crisis. Rolling blackouts in China isn't a great indicator where the energy market is going.

Trying to bounce back from Covid, the world has run headlong into an energy crisis. The last spike of this magnitude popped the 2008 bubble.

Crude oil is up 65% this year to $83 per barrel. Gasoline, above $3 per gallon in most of the country, is more costly than any time since 2014, with inventories at the lowest level in five years.

Meanwhile natural gas, which provides more than 30% of all U.S. electricity and a lot of wintertime heating, has more than doubled this year to $5 per million Btu.

Even coal is exploding, with China and India mining as fast as possible. The price of U.S. coal is up 400% this year to $270 per ton.

The situation is considerably worse in Europe, where electricity prices have quintupled and natgas prices have surged to $30/mm Btu—the energy equivalent of paying $180 for a barrel of oil.

All this is feeding into the inflation loop, pushing up the prices for energy-intensive metals like nickel, steel, silicon. Fertilizer, mostly made from natural gas, has ramped past 2008 record highs to nearly $1,000 a ton, obliterating the $300 to $450/ton range of the past few years. China announced this week it would halt fertilizer exports. Copper, perhaps the most vital raw material in building out a wind and solar industry, is near a record at $4.50 per pound. We’ll have to deal with inflation after surviving the challenge of not freezing to death this winter. “Only some form of government intervention that mandates large-scale power cuts and rationing to certain sectors can curb gas demand and temper gas prices materially this winter,” wrote Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects last week.

Do note that what has happened now has a lot to do with the central banks printing trillions. And that the World has, at least officially, turned away from coal and fossil fuels without thinking where the additional energy needed to replace them will come.

Whom can we blame for this mess? A combination of factors. It starts with central banks persisting with artificially low interest rates and a flood of cheap money despite record levels of consumer spending and a 30% surge in Chinese exports—all of which is straining against pandemic-constricted supply chains. Add to that Russia not flowing nearly as much gas into Europe as expected (perhaps as a passive-aggressive tactic to force approval of Nord Stream 2).

But the roots go deeper. The ESG and carbon divestment craze has so demonized fossil fuels (and nuclear power) that institutional investors and governments have cut them out of portfolios entirely, and have instead been flowing capital to more socially acceptable low-carbon alternatives.

If oil prices go over 100 dollars per barrel, that will put on an handbrake on the global economy and we might be looking at a global economic recession/depression.

The problem is once you sacrifice some individuals to “collective objectives” you ruin the collective whole in favor of certain individual members of it. — NOS4A2

How wrong you have it. If you "sacrifice" someone, you start with yourself.

Yes, but if well-meaning democrats find they can't compete except by copying that approach we get into Animal Farm territory - the pigs become men.. — Tim3003

Exactly. One of the most perilous strategies is to think that if in a democracy some actors use dubious methods, to protect democracy you have to use similar dubious methods.

The truth is that populist conspiracy theorists promote the most excessive, incredible and most pure propaganda on purpose: they just assume that everything is propaganda, so you fight "the powers that be" with your own propaganda.

I fear that most are concerned with whom the wealth is given to rather than the fact that it is stolen in the first place. In effect they accept that state institutions are above and beyond common morality. — NOS4A2

And just how high do you think common morality is? Sometimes it can get ugly, you know.

Sorry, but fancy-pants libertarian individualism entrenched in la-la-land utopia doesn't cut it when you belong to a people who are and have been quite a "dispensable", unimportant people. With only few million people in a tough part of the neighborhood you know that others wouldn't care a shit if my country would have been conquered and the people assimilated to another culture. Or if your nation wouldn't have existed at all. Many would actually see it only as logical. History has seen a multitude of larger nations and people simply vanish away.

There are firm reasons for societies to have some collective objectives, that unfortunately have to put the individual second. We can surely argue just what those are, but not if they exist at all. The individual isn't a god-like figure put onto a podium to be worshipped. Just as there are firm reasons for the rights of the individual.

Just upholding one or the other (the individual or the collective) isn't idealistic, it's simply stupid.

Simply put it: Authoritarian regimes and governments in general have now learned how to control and use (or abuse) the new media called the internet and social media. That's just it.

Of course there's more to this as the negative sides have not happened because of some sinister actors like Russia (or the vast hordes of different lobbyists). I think the historian Neil Ferguson has made a clever comparison with the time we live in:

To understand the current era, Ferguson believes we need to look more at what happened after Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press. Like the Web, the use of these presses was difficult to centrally control. “At the beginning of the Reformation 501 years ago, Martin Luther thought naively that if everybody could read the Bible in the vernacular, they’d have a direct relationship with God, it would create ‘the priesthood of all believers’ and everything would be awesome,” said Ferguson.

“We’ve said the same things about the Internet,” he added. “We think that's obviously a good idea. Except it's not obviously a good idea, any more than it was in the 16th century. Because what the Europeans had was not ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ They had 130 years of escalating religious conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years War – one of the most destructive conflicts ever.”

The more he studies that period, the more echoes Ferguson sees in the 21st century. “What one can see in the 16th and 17th centuries is polarization, fake news-type stories, the world getting smaller and therefore contagion is capable of spreading much faster,” Ferguson said. “These big shifts in network structure led to revolutions against hierarchical institutions.”

Ferguson points to recent studies showing that fake news can spread faster and farther than real news when it’s especially sensational. “The crazy stuff is more likely to go viral because we're kind of interested in crazy stuff, but this is not surprising historically,” he said. “The idea that witches live amongst us and should be burned went as viral as anything that Martin Luther said ... Indeed, it turned out that witch burning was more likely to happen in places where there were more printing presses.”

Let's just remember the religious wars that rocked the Christian world back then at the time after Gutenberg.

Voltaire was right: In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. — NOS4A2

The irony here is that many agree with this. They only disagree just who is actually stealing from whom.

Obviously some have this problem of living in a society with some issues that are collective.

I don’t like that view because it limits application of rights, and makes them subject to abridgement or suppression by the authority that confers them. — NOS4A2

States exist, no matter how benevolent they are. You don't live with without your beloved Canada even you don't need it to assist in your breathing, Nos.

Hm. I presume that you thinking of more than Covid vaccinations?

I don’t think democratic policy change should entail the violation of basic human rights. — NOS4A2

So NOS42A2,

Which article does fighting a pandemic that has killed millions violate? Which article from 1 to 30? See the articles at the UDHR page of the UN

Or is a declaration by the UN too pinko-liberal and not your human rights? :smirk:

There's no surprise in the Rittenhouse verdict knowing the gun laws in the US and the fact that guns are bought basically for self defense, not for hunting or a shooting hobby.

But on the (positive?) side, you didn't have riots in the US because of the verdict, did you?
I think people have been lucky that there hasn't been an incident where two Rittenhouse -characters on opposing sides (like Michael Reinoehl) with semi-automatic weapons face off. There simply are so many guns.

the reasons for Finnish authorities not talking about Russian migrants were incredibly specific (as you yourself have described them), not symptomatic of a broader problem in discussing immigration (same goes for the UK's wilful blindness on illegal alien numbers). — Kenosha Kid

You got it.

But still... would Crimea be in Russia if the Ukraine had done the obvious thing and acted on its intent to join? — Kenosha Kid

A bit sidestep from the thread, but I cannot help myself:razz: :

For Putin offense is best defense. Russians think that way. Napoleon and then Hitler were such traumatic experiences, that many in Russia gather that West is up to no good, still. Putin rides on this sentiment. But the real tragedy here is that I think it's unlikely that Ukraine would have gotten to NATO. Ukraine's economy is a disaster zone, it's internal politics a total mess and if Putin would have just sat and waited, Ukraine would have continued just the way it had been. People can disagree with this, but I think that NATO membership of Ukraine wouldn't have happened. Likely outcome would have been like the present and the relationship that Sweden and also Finland have with NATO: cooperation, but no membership.

In fact Russia had to just wait that the US got unfocused and overstretched in Central Asia, which was to Putin a very successful strategy: After 9/11 the US had bases all around the -Stans and now it has nothing, and Russia is holding military exercises with the countries. But yes, Crimea still would be part of Ukraine then, but half of Ukraine would be pro-Russian and the EU would have continued to dismantle it's various armed forces and Russia would have been seen in a better light. Perhaps just to get Crimea back to mother Russia is a prize for Vladimir the Great.

But back to the subject!

I mostly agree, but as I said immigration is discussed openly, however the narrative is more or less owned by hate. Brexit was an immigration discussion. The remain side argued for pragmatism and humanitarianism. The leave side faked images of swarms of migrants queueing at our borders. It didn't matter that such propaganda was outed as such prior to the vote. Hate is blind but vigorous. — Kenosha Kid

Or fear. The UKIP argument was a great example how a complex issue like EU membership was taken over by fearmongering (perhaps the hoards of refugees should have been placed with pictures of hoards of truck drivers to show the actual reality). Try then having an intelligent discussion about the membership, but that's the main point with populism. It isn't about having a true open debate. The worst part is that populists that believe in conspiracy theories are for totally open an unadulterated propaganda. Since they believe that all what the powers at be do is propaganda, they go with their own propaganda. Hence issues that they know aren't actually true are upheld, because it's all a way to fight the establishment.

And do notice how the narrative is controlled. It's said that the woke-left virtue signals, but similar yet totally different virtue signalling goes on with the populist right, where in my view even more strict adherence to the narrative. Try saying anything positive about immigration and one is on thin ice. It's like US Republicans trying to talk about Trump. Best example of this is actually Trump himself. Trump seems to be actually fearful of losing his crowd, his base. You can see this how he immediately backed down from encouraging people taking the Covid-vaccination after getting immediate boos. For the Trump crowd in the age of tribalism, being for Covid-shots is the message of the other side of the "culture war", even if Trump's 'Operation Warp Speed' was in the end a success. A politician like Trump goes with this crowd.

Trump stepping out of his Overton window, gets booed and immediately tries to backtrack...a sign of leadership?

It is the _quality_, not the amount, of discussion that is the problem. In service of better, more open discourse, the onus is on all parties to be honest, thoughtful and self-representing. — Kenosha Kid

I'm starting to fear that the way how the discussion is dumbed down to low quality is done on purpose. It's like making politics into a show like professional wrestling in the US. I fear this kind of stupid politics will be mimicked here in Europe too. Why engage with the other side on actual (boring) policies when you have these wonderful fictional stereotypes to attack?

If Trump supporters for instance have a problem with being "censored", i.e. being called racists when they e.g. call Mexicans rapists, the onus is on them to up the quality of their discourse, not on others to self-censor accurate descriptions of their behaviour. — Kenosha Kid

That was the deliberate and successful way for Trump to get into the limelight of media attention. It angered the people Trump wanted to anger, just like muslim ban or the Wall-thing. Let's take Trump's famous Wall. Any politician could say how they would increase border control (and not be picked up even by the reporters following the elections), but to get to the people, you make up this idea of "Building a big, beautiful wall and make Mexico pay for it!". Easy idea that can be a slogan and a meme to be spread around. Same thing with Colin Caepernick and "taking a knee". With George Bush (the elder) similar issue was trying to make the burning of the US flag illegal. I guess American policy wonks have a name for this.

The real problem is that with populists like Trump, they are only showmen, not politicians who during elections would resort populist rhetoric, but behind closed doors would morph back to be actual statesmen. The election show never stops, it just goes on and on. And when you have that show going on 24 hours, having the ability to actually lead and get political consensus is the last thing on your mind. Trying to reach a political consensus, making deals with the opposition, would be seen as a defeat. This makes political leadership dysfunctional as we saw with the Trump administration. Or with the Chavez-Maduro administration, if we take an example of left-wing populism.

The worst result is of course that actual policies will be a mess. And this, unfortunately, has happened with immigration policy in many countries.

You started out in your OP claiming that this was somehow subject to censorship, a point I take issue with, but you seem to be sticking to that line. That's a very common claim these days from your side of the political divide. People can't shut up about not being able to speak. — Kenosha Kid

Perhaps I should clear a bit more this as this censorship isn't about the political divide you are talking about, which is related to the "culture war" issue etc.

If a Finnish high ranking officials make a statement of Russia using refugees as a pressure, that is far more than just me or you making the argument. It will be understood as a response from the government of Finland and will immediately get a response from Russia. Relations with Russia are of the highest priority to Finland, so it's not a laughing matter here. Hence the official wouldn't say this publicly... especially a few years ago. The problem back then was that nobody (or few if any) were publicly stating this, which would be quite easy to see from the bizarre and totally different nature of the incident compared to the larger mass-migration of 2015 and 2016.

The problem, it isn't about censorship, but more of self-censorship. Or even more basically the attitude that if you made the argument that this incident was actively perpetuated by Russia being a trope of the anti-immigration activists. My main point was that it's not healthy for a democracy if the public discourse doesn't debate actual realities, but that is only left to be done behind closed doors. This can happen when the public discourse is dominated by ferocious lobby-groups, hyper-partisan activists or there's deep polarization. Immigration policy has fallen into this and yes, it has been basically the extreme rights favorite issue so much, that any criticism of the policy is seen as far-right.

Now in the case of Belarus the EU itself has said that Belarus and president Lukashenko has taken these actions and used refugees as political pawns. And here you see then the change: the media does report this while understanding the plight of the refugee themselves. The only one holding the line that Belarus has nothing to do with this refugee crisis in the Polish/Lithuanian border is Lukashenko himself.

(A short review of the situation in Belarus)

But my point is that it doesn't follow that the world not talking about Russian cyclists has anything to do with immigration being taboo. — Kenosha Kid

(Btw a small correction, the cyclists weren't Russian, but the refugees from Syria, Afghanistan etc.)

Immigration isn't a taboo. We just have lithurgies how to talk of it. On both sides of the so-called "culture war".

As for why Finland didn't talk much about it, sure, maybe you're all nuts (my Norwegian friends assure me of this), but here's another theory: it's not that immigration is a taboo subject, but rather that the failure to protect borders at the height of paranoia about Russia was politically awkward. — Kenosha Kid

Maybe we are nuts. But I assume you never have heard about Finlandization. But the thing is that non-aligned countries like Sweden and Finland talk about Russia differently than NATO members like Estonia, Poland or Norway.

We have a comparable thing here. The foreign office has been trying to get a count of how many illegal aliens are in the UK for decades, but it's consistently blocked by No. 10 and the home office. Why? Because if you don't have the numbers, you don't know how "bad" it is and don't have to deal with grief about it from your anti-immigration backbenchers and constituents. You'd have to _deal_ with it (and them) then. So they just don't talk about it. Not because it's taboo, but because it's a topic poisoned by right-wing hate. Even right-wing leaders don't want to face that. — Kenosha Kid

Being open right from the start is in my view the correct way to do things, because otherwise you will just give ammunition to anti-immigration populists who will concoct conspiracy theories around immigration policy and the role of the government. It's far more damning if the government withholds information or just looks as if it is withholding information of a "hot potato" issue.

The possibility of a lab leak, which China fervently will deny to the end, is a possibility. That China uses this as biochemical warfare sounds very strange and more like a way to put the lab leak hypothesis into question altogether, to be a silly nutjob conspiracy.

There is the possibility we will never know.

Let's check first how wide of the mark I am. Correct me where I deviate from what you say you meant. - The problem is that right-wingers don't seem to be able to talk about Russian invasion of Finland and Norway without bringing up Mexican immigrantion to the US, which makes the debate not only toxic but meaningless except to like-minded paranoiacs, who therefore dominate the discourse. And this holds pretty much across the spectrum of politics. — Kenosha Kid

Notice Kenosha, that the OP isn't at all about Mexico. I brought up Mexico (and Mexicans) to specifically answer the comment @baker made about the role of the character of people and how society works, which basically a totally different topic than immigration itself. And yes, it's different from European immigration and especially the use of refugees by third countries.

So bunching up different topics is a bit confusing for me, hence I have a bit of a problem to follow your reasoning.

You're obviously very concerned about immigration (you started a thread on it). — Kenosha Kid

More concerned about the ability to have an open discussion in this forum without people being put into the molds that political polarization wants to put us. And people hearing dog whistles (or assumed dog whistles) if you start a thread about some politicized issue.

Could you imagine a redneck giving a crap about Russian cyclists in Norway? — Kenosha Kid

Something the same happening in let's say the US-Canadian border, and I could evade the crap only with simply not following the media here, which does report even all the small things that happen in the US, like what Biden has said or what the Rittenhouse verdict was etc. (And no, both don't have anything to do with the thread)

How can that be then, how can the society not work, when, as you say, the vast majority are honorable, decent and abide the rules of the society? — baker

Thanks for asking, this is an important point.

Simply if they have a lot to lose themselves and are not desperate, they won't stand against braking of those rules. Sure, they won't like it at all, likely will be disgusted about how low things have gone in their country, but will try to go on with their lives. The simple fact is that a lot of people aren't interested in politics and just want to live their lives. Hence democracy can be dismantled even with the majority of people are decent and law abiding.

Let's say that in your country after a terrorist attack, political turmoil or something, the ruling administration makes a self-coup and hence demolishes democracy, yet promises that the actions taken are only temporary. Those people that accept the administration's promises, are they suddenly not honorable, decent and law abiding?

It's not clear that the existence of an effective police force is what keeps crime levels manageable, or how this correlates with a particular socioeconomic system. — baker

It's more like a canary in the coal mine. The simple fact that tourists are not advised to call the police if something happens to them, but to contact preferably their embassy does say something about the institution. It just tells that many issues are off, not that the reason would just this institution in the society for why it's dysfunctional.

On the other hand, there is the Christian doctrine of rendering unto Caesar. — baker

Yep. You can quote part the Bible here directly. Explains well why Roman Emperors finally accepted Christianity and threw out the old Roman gods.

I'm sorry, I'm quite spent. The government of the country I live in has passed a law recently according to which all police commanders and some other high officials in the police were automatically demoted to acting commanders etc., and now there is an open competition for those functions, by new criteria. And more. — baker

But ironic (or sad), but I cannot immediately know what country you are talking about. Would it be Slovenia? Slovenia is so small that it barely surfaces in English news media...

Kenosha Kid, sometimes the answers one gets unintentionally make exactly the point you are trying to make. Thanks!

If I confuse you, I hope I can make my point more clear by commenting your response. I'll start from the end and go backwards.

If we all just agree that, if the Russia story is true, it was a bad thing to do, does that satisfy you? — Kenosha Kid

Would be somewhat rare if people would do that. Many wouldn't bother to read it through, but just to assume what the person will talk about from few words. Those that read it through, I would think that some would think that the whole story is just thing invented by people with anti-immigrant attitudes and wouldn't care to give a moment to look at the story. People get confused about Russian 'active measures'. Just look at the other example of Trump and Russia. Perfect example of polarization and the dumbing down of the discussion.

Your second image suggests that, contrary to your assertion that people can't talk about Russian emigration, people are in fact talking about it. Even the cartoonists. — Kenosha Kid

Actually, the point I was making was that IN THE YEAR 2018 there wasn't this debate or those cartoons. As I stated, NOW things have changed. If you haven't noticed, the EU has adopted a different strategy or basically has had the time to come up with a strategy.

On your first image btw, I'm reminded of Farage's tactics in Brexit campaigning. Photos of groups of people allegedly from abroad are no doubt extremely potent to the right wing, you guys go nuts over that stuff. They're just not all that scary to the rest of us. It's just a photo of a group of cyclists to me, and it doesn't concern me at all where they've come from. — Kenosha Kid

I assume that if I start a thread with "Discourse and Reality" and have pictures that remind you of Nigel Farage, do you assume I'm in his camp? (Well, I think he is one of the most irresponsible British populists, but that I guess doesn't matter.)

Ok, do you have any idea how remote the Norwegian-Russian border is? And how absolutely bizarre someone cycling to the border is in the winter? It's basically tundra, wilderness. Few inhabitants, few if any villages on both sides of the border. The reason for the bicycles was of course that Russian law bans people just walking over the border. But do note that just how hilarious it is to assume that suddenly a black market would swing up in bicycles in Murmansk. That some "entrepreneurial" Russians noticing the sudden arrival in Murmansk would have the ability to give thousands of them the 136 mile ride to the border and then have bicycles there for them to go over the border? And note that once bikes weren't allowed, the refugees suddenly (but not before) had cars. The fact is that smugglers don't have such organizational skills (or basically incentive) to suddenly come up with bicycles and later cars and fly people to the arctic makes it obvious that this was an active measures operation by Russia.

It's perfectly straightforward to condemn Russia's experiments with the Finnish border _and_ support helping refugees from war at the same time. This only appears contradictory if you're an extremist (i.e. have the view that immigration must always/never be supported). — Kenosha Kid

Of course. Have I been saying anything else? I think you assume so if I start a thread about migration with "Discourse and Reality..."

he implicit part two as far as I can tell has the following logic:
1. Russian warfare via immigration against Finland is bad.
2. Therefore immigration is bad.
3. Therefore immigration of refugees is bad.
4. Therefore "silenced" (and yet ubiquitous) ab initio anti-immigration arguments are justified. — Kenosha Kid

No,I'm not saying that. But seems you think that I am.

And what you are describing is the typical right wing anti-immigrant view. Hence the referral of making my point.

Population growth is the most natural reason for economic growth and if you don't have population growth, but negative growth, then immigration would be very beneficial. And countries like US and Canada have benefited hugely from immigration. Yet one kind of immigration, those that are refugees, has historically been viewed negatively and not all refugee problems have been resolved. Everybody loves tourists as they bring money to the community, but refugees are viewed as a burden to the community. In many cases that hasn't been true, and in many cases refugees are accepted, especially in the cases of internal displacement. Yet that countries use refugees pawns in their political games is simply disgusting. One should have a debate about that without the typical polarized mantras. That's my main point.

You prove the point yourself by making the instantaneous leap from Russia's typical wrongdoing (a non-controversial topic except to the Putinbots) to Mexicans-have-the-wrong-culture arguments that have no analogy with Russian cold warfare. — Kenosha Kid

Sigh.

At least I tried to make the OPPOSITE case: that people are the same. Mexicans put into Finnish society behave quite similarly as others and there isn't really much cultural difference. The point was that the societies themselves, the institutions, are different and people have to adapt to this even if they, the vast majority, are totally honest hardworking people.

If dialogue about immigration is difficult and heated, that's because it's been poisoned by racist, nationalistic, traditionalistic i.e. conservative sentiment. — Kenosha Kid

Well, @Kenosha Kid, can we have a discussion without the poison of polarization? It's not about "winning" the argument, proving others wrong, but exchanging views and learning from others.