Millions disagree with a lot of things I believe, doesn't bother me. I'm pretty confident we can find many things you believe where we can see millions disagreeing with. — boethius

You missed the point, or else you're intentionally ignoring it (which seems likely based on the intellectual dishonesty of your recent posts). The point is not simply that millions disagree with you, but that those millions disagree with you because they have benefited from the massive improvements that I mentioned. Their lives have improved. For example, they have lost less children thanks to their improved access to improved healthcare, they've been able to send those children to school, they've lived longer and healthier lives, they've been able to buy washing machines to release women from day-long drudgery, and so on. In saying that these millions disagree with you, I wanted you, or people reading this, to see what you are saying, namely that these improvements are not really improvements at all--and thus to see just how misanthropic and reactionary your position is.

It's been nearly three years since Trump won the 2016 election and we have ample evidence to confirm that racism in fact played a key role in mobilizing votes for Trumps. Not "economic anxiety". In fact, I would challenge anyone to find studies that do show economic uncertainty was the key issue for Trump voters. Unfortunately, a random gym owner does not count. Despite the video claiming that a majority of Trump voters were enticed by his message due to economic struggles, more Hillary voters claimed that the economy was a more important issue than Trump voters (52% vs. 41%), while a majority of Trump supporters claimed that immigration was one of their biggest issues (64% vs 33%). — Maw

Thanks for the information. While I think that the data tells us a more complex story than you're suggesting, it does look like I was wrong about Trump voters. I didn't know the issues had been so racialized. But I'm still going to defend my basic points--later some time.

If you read the actual facts about Trump's character, career, history and politics, there is no way you could support him, but of course, neither he nor his supporters read anything much, let alone anything critical. So we're supposed to recognise that wilful ignorance and mendacity constitute a 'tectonic shift'.

I don't think so. — Wayfarer

This is exactly the kind of attitude that the video is targeting. They knew all that and still voted for him, and I don't think you care why.

I don't get why centrist liberals always want to make such a display of their outrage, even after three years. It's embarrassing.

:up:

BTW I enjoyed your righteous ranting about impeachment recently in one of the Trump threads.

NOTE: "The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators"

Are you saying that these are not improvements at all, because other problems somehow make them illusory? Millions would disagree.

The mistake you make is "that these increases have improved life". This conclusion does not follow from the premise "some metrics have increased". — boethius

I am saying that life has improved in certain measurable ways.

Now please don't respond once again by arguing against claims that everything is getting better. I'm not making that claim.

Links:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index-escosura?time=1870..2015&country=GBR+USA+KOR+IND+CHN+BRA+CPV+AGO+GMB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

I don't accept it in the next sentence. I accept that some metrics have increased, that is not the same as saying there has been an overall improvement. — boethius

I said that "economic growth in capitalist form has made life better in several measurable ways", not that "there has been an overall improvement". If you accept that some metrics have increased, and that these increases have improved life, then you agree with the statement you said your were debating against.

I do not view improvements that are not sustainable as improvements — boethius

Maybe this is the answer, in which case, yeah, reactionary.

This what I'm debating against. This argument reduces to "measurable if you choose to measure metrics that have increased", which, sure, I grant that. But that some metrics have improved is not sufficient reason to conclude capitalism or modernity in general has been an overall improvement. — boethius

First you say you're arguing against the claim that "economic growth in capitalist form has made life better in several measurable ways" but then you appear to accept it in the next sentence. I did not claim that capitalism has made everything better. I was trying to point out that any critique of capitalism that doesn't accept, or that disapproves of, the improvements that capitalism has enabled is worthless, or worse, reactionary.

Otherwise I completely disagree with your basic argument that industrialization and urbanization are bad, but I didn't really intervene here to debate it.

'Communism' as represented by totalitarian Soviet Stalinism, definitely was no more ecologically sound than capitalism, being just as dependent on oil and doing things like draining whole lakes to grow cotton along with other catastrophes. (And there is a seed of this in Marx who does not question the goodness of industrialization; an industrialization fetishism to use Marx's language.) — boethius

Marx does not use "fetishism" in this sense, and he arguably doesn't even use the word pejoratively. Rather, he uses it to mean the attribution to inanimate objects of powers or characteristics that properly belong to people. In particular, he writes about the reification and naturalization involved in market exchange, which is a "fetishism of commodities" in which relations between labouring people are seen as relations between objects: social relations become properties of things, and this state of affairs is experienced as being natural.

Generally, economic growth in capitalist form has made life better in several measurable ways for people all over the world. This in itself is not an "argument supporting the status quo", but just a fact. Similarly, we can acknowledge the benefits of growth in the Soviet Union without endorsing forced collectivization, terror, and the use of slave labour (and environmental devastation, as you point out). My argument against capitalism is that progress in human development doesn't happen fast enough, fairly enough, or securely enough, and ties us all into a system of endless toil and precarity.

Hah, that's an interesting choice. Nowadays the book is probably more name-checked than actually read, but I thought it was a well-written novella in the antiutopia genre (not to mention prophetic - it was written hot on the trail of the Bolshevik revolution, almost 30 years before 1984). — SophistiCat

I liked it a lot. It's remarkable that he saw what was happening as early as 1920. Remarkable either because he prophesied some of the features of the regime and the society that would characterize Stalinism, or just because those features were clearly evident soon after the revolution--which is remarkable to me as someone weaned on the Trotskyist version of events in which the revolution was fine and dandy before Stalin took power.

Apropo of nothing, I slightly know his father, a Russian poet, and I met the future author when he was still in school. Haven't read the book though. — SophistiCat

Cool. I haven't read it either to be honest. I'll get to it.

Looking forward to hearing more from jrob. — Baden

Recently my adventures have been limited to sitting by the window looking at the birds while I convalesce, but I'll see what I can do.

I see what you mean about redneck culture. It's not like that here at all. The macho culture, in which toughness is cultivated among both men and women, is pervasive and doesn't signify class.

Talking of class, I'm not sure how it works here. It's certainly nothing like Britain, where class is determined or signified in multiple other ways than money and power. For example, I'm told that there is very little variation in spoken accent among Russians, across society and across the country. And I haven't noticed any snobbery, although there's a high degree of respect for success in the professions, in art and science, and in business. But it looks like one's social status is entirely independent of one's origin, all else being equal (but practically, one can be born into a dynasty of former KGB or Party apparatchiks).

Regarding homophobia, many of the liberal Russians I know don't consider themselves homophobic, but they'd be seen as such by Westerners. They say that Russia is not as homophobic as the propagandist Western media likes to portray it, and that "we have our gays here too" (in the typical Russian patriotic paternal manner), and that they have their own night-clubs and sub-culture--but they're suspicious of or baffled by things like Gay Pride and the public assertion of homosexual identity. It could be that they're simply unaware of the level of oppression faced by gay people in Russia, or they think it's a minor issue.

I very much second what Baden said (the avalanche movie is Force Majeure, by the way, one of my faves.) — csalisbury

Yeah it's been on my to-watch list for some time.

If your reading this S, grow up for fucks sake! — Wallows

On the plus side, he would not have hesitated to correct this spelling mistake.

I banned @S, formerly Sapientia.

I had deleted several posts in a long-running dispute between him and another member in the Should hate speech be allowed? discussion. The posts were low quality and mostly off-topic, and @S's were often aggressive. After deleting them I posted this to them both, in the discussion:

Take your pointless dispute elsewhere, preferably not on this forum. — jamalrob

@S replied with this:

Firstly, fuck you.

And secondly, if you don't want to see discussions like that between me and him, then ban me. You have my permission, not that you need it, and I've just swore at you, so...

I didn't take the decision lightly, particularly because he has been part of this community for a long time. Almost anyone else responding to moderation in that way would have been instantly banned, and we do try to be consistent, but in this case we gave him time to retract. That never happened, so he's gone.

Note also that he had been warned about his behaviour several times before.

As I think I've already explained in two separate threads, I tried different colour schemes in response to a request for a "night mode". I'll probably change it back.

:up:

I'll try out some colour schemes and ask for feedback. First option:

The banner background and buttons are #3c3c3c. (Colour is objective?)

It's grey.

To find the objectively best color — Congau

I think I've found it.

@S @Terrapin Station

Take your pointless dispute elsewhere, preferably not on this forum.

The options for customization are very limited, and it's only customizable in admin, not by regular members. I can't change the colour of the main content background, so we're stuck with white.

The options for customization are very limited, and it's only customizable in admin, not by regular members.

Sounds to me you had no obvious good choices and very little time to decide so you acted on impulse, which is unpredictable and resistant to analysis by nature. People have done a lot worse. I recall a movie, the plot of which involves a father who when with his family on a skiing holiday and faced with a sudden avalanche runs away without ensuring their safety. They all survive but then have to deal with his reaction. I'd rather be mythologized as a hero than face the prospect of being seen as a coward for the rest of my life. Having said all that, it's got to be an extremely unsettling thought that your reaction could have had even more negative consequences than it did. Give it some time to process. — Baden

That works for me! Appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah. Criticizing someone's grammar and "bad English" yet bad English is the world's most popular and UNIVERSALLY spoken and written language by anyone who isn't a grammar Nazi. I am far more annoyed by people that complain about "bad grammar" than those that complain about proper grammar.

You are being lazy. — Swan

No, your posts really are difficult to understand. For example, I can't make any any sense of this: "The problem for me is you pose some kind of solipsismic thing by saying that "gender" is determined by what thinks while no existing references ...". And your first post in this discussion, as someone has already pointed out, was mostly gibberish.

You're the one who is being lazy. Write better or your posts will be deleted.

How intense is the pressure to be traditionally masculine? If there is a lot of pressure, is it lessened if you're a foreigner or the opposite? Do Russians have stronger ribs?* I've grown very comfortable with the reflexive self-mocking of masculinity that gets you through in middle class liberal America (and EU europe?) and I think it would be jarring, for me, to be an environment that very straightforwardly celebrates traditional masculinity. But is the Russian premium on masculinity overemphasized over here? — csalisbury

I've thought about these questions but I'm not clear about the answers, and I don't trust my impressions. I've spent most of my time in a megacity so what does that really tell me about Russia in general? And I can't speak Russian, my social circle here is small, and I haven't really made any male friends independently of my wife. But I'll try to say something about it...

Yes, of course the Western impression is exaggerated, but it's definitely a thing. I can say with confidence that all the Russian men I know have deeper voices than me and that there's a premium on how much vodka a man can drink. Otherwise I'm not sure. Gender roles are pretty traditional. In saying that I'm not saying that women are expected to be housewives while men bring home the bacon, or anything like that. Maybe it's more superficial: the Russian women I know are forceful, supremely confident, totally independent, and successful, but at the same time they're very feminine and expect men to be traditionally masculine in some ways, to at least act dominant. She might make more money than him, but he's gotta pay the bill at the restaurant and fight off bears to protect her, that kind of thing (sounds like a weird restaurant, I know).

My wife and I kind of take it in turns to pay at restaurants, and when she pays, without thinking about it she surreptitiously gives me her credit card so it looks like I'm paying. So, it's deeply ingrained (it just feels wrong to her to be seen to pay) but at the same time superficial (it just feels wrong to her to be seen to pay).

By the way, in saying it's superficial I don't mean to denigrate it. How we behave in public, how we conduct ourselves, is important.

Modern feminism, the MeToo movement, and Western PC culture are widely mocked and derided by Russians, especially women. It's probably true that the state media deliberately encourage this ("next up, it's time to laugh at the Americans again"), but it's far from being a top-down thing. From the point of view of some of the Russian women I know--and bear in mind I'm over-simplifying things to the point of unfairness just to make the point--women who don't know how to handle lecherous men are idiotic or weak, and if a man goes too far, which is inevitable, you get over it and stop whining. What's important to them are the practical things: equal opportunity, reproductive rights, childcare, and easy divorce; they don't have time for victimhood. Being raped, unless it's particularly violent, is merely an annoyance. So there's a kind of female macho thing, and it has good and bad sides.

Maybe Russian women are under pressure to be feminine, but those I've spoken to don't seem to feel this as an unwelcome pressure. They're proud that Russian women "look after themselves", for example, meaning they spend a lot of effort, time, and money on how they look.

Anyway, as far as I can tell I've passed the masculinity test. I don't know if that's because I resemble a bear.

Or no? The most famous Russian-American I know died in strangely similar circumstances. I'm glad you fared better. Plus I imagine that's a pretty handy (and well-earned!) warstory in terms of the proving-you're-not-a-soft-westerner thing. — csalisbury

Ha, you're the third person to tell me about that unfortunate guy since my own brush with death.

Yeah my story is all right, but...it's weird. It doesn't feel good to think or talk about it, about the details of the incident, which I didn't really go into in the first post. Others around me, especially my wife, have already mythologized it. In this myth, I'm the hero trying to save her life (she was in the car). But I don't know if it was like that. I don't really know what I thought I was doing. It was certainly stupid, reckless, useless: I had already satisfied myself that the car couldn't really fall off the edge, and how could I imagine that I'd be able to stop an SUV from rolling down a slope? Was I doing it just because I thought it was the thing to do, even while knowing I'd fail? The most horrific thought of all, aside from the stuff about death and serious injury, is that I was making a show of being a real man, and yet failing, which makes me a pathetic fraud, acting inauthentically under the Russian pressure to be masculine. I risked my life for nothing, and that makes me feel guilty, because in doing so I risked causing pain and sadness to people who love me. In fact I did cause my wife pain because she was so worried for me.

So...normally I can turn my experiences into chirpy charming self-deprecating anecdotes, but this one still tastes bitter.

Fascinating stuff. Hopeful to hear more. — Noble Dust

Thanks ND.

Glad you made it safe and sound. — Wallows

Thank you for the kind words, pig boy.

In August, when the weather was still hot, I went to the MAKS air show. We didn't want to pay to get in to the airport like you're supposed to, so instead we found a spot by the river that runs alongside it. We sat there cooking shashlik and drinking beer, along with a few hundred other people who had the same idea. I didn't know until recently that the barbecue is an integral part of Russian life, probably even more than it is for Americans and Australians. (Shashlik originated in the Turkic cultures of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and found its way to Moscow in the 19th century)

We watched awesome Russian bombers and fighter jets tearing the sky apart. Sometimes I wanted to cover my ears but chose to suffer the incredible noise so as not to look like a soft Westerner. I met a man originally from Minsk, Belorussia, who had come down the river on a boat from Moscow that morning with his wife and children. He wanted to practice his English and drink whisky with me. He apologized for having Irish and not Scotch, but I didn't mind.

He asked if I was spying for the CIA. Two other people asked me the same thing that day. Although it was a joke, it was also an expression of patriotism. And my wife, who is no militarist or supporter of Putin, was full of patriotic pride in the technology, in the bravery of the pilots, and in the respect that these displays of military power engender in foreigners. The patriotism here is not always uncritical of those in power, but it's fundamental. Maybe it's a lot like American exceptionalist patriotism ("the greatest country on earth"), because there's an assumption that Russia should be the leader of the world or at least up there with the other great powers. To me this seems to be in tension with the widespread desire for better public services and infrastructure, but what do I know?

Also like America, patriotism here is not often associated with an ethnic nationalism. At least, this is not mainstream or traditional, and natsionalist in everyday speech pejoratively denotes far-right chauvinism. Rather, this patriotism is, I suppose, continuous with the inclusive (or imperial, however you look at it) patriotism of Soviet times. A trivial example: a few Russians I know, both men and women, young and old, have expressed pride in the fact that Russian women are particularly beautiful, and they put this down to the centuries-old mixture of ethnicities.

Incidentally, Moscow is more multi-ethnic than I'd expected, and they're cultures I was almost totally unfamiliar with. Tatars, Uzbeks, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, and others. And (shhh) they all have more interesting food than the Russians.

When my condemnations of Putin or Stalin or the Tsars become too passionate, after too many vodkas with my wife's friends and family, someone will usually complain that I'm exaggerating. I appreciate that it's galling to see a foreigner trashing your history and I'm usually careful about complicated issues that I'm largely ignorant about (in my defence, I'm always criticizing rulers rather than peoples or nations), but there's a tendency for them to get defensive and say things like "yes it was bad, but other countries have done bad things too" and always "we won the war", which is sometimes an attempt to minimize the bad stuff.

There is a Russian guy I know who I try to avoid. I can't quite work out his politics. When he went to Spain he was most interested in visiting Franco's tomb to pay his respects, he argued with me in defence of Franco, and he's vehemently anti-communist and anti-socialist. So he might be some kind of a fascist, but then it must be hard to be a fascist in the country that prides itself on beating the Nazis. On the other hand there are fascists and extreme nationalists in Russia, so I guess they reconcile things somehow.

When I don't manage to avoid him, my wife, acting as interpreter, now chooses not to translate anything controversial between us. I resented this at first when I found out, but it's probably for the best.

See, that's how you do a happy ending. Try harder next time! — Baden

Thanks. You're really helping with my post-traumatic depression and shame, I must say. :wink:

Thanks :grin:

I really liked the Fukuyama, btw. Only about 1/3 of it has anything to do with the caricature that has been so often criticized. The other two thirds are those criticisms. It's really not the naive, triumphal book it's made out to be. I don't ultimately agree with him, I guess, but it's the most cogent political worldpicture I've groked (though I haven't groked many.) It's refreshingly direct, and it's insane that it was written in 92 (he predicts that there will be a wave of authoritarian movements and a backslide of democracy sometime in the next generation. He sees it as likely temporary, but he predicts it will be severe and will see new, unheard of authoritarian-hybrids. He also predicts that immigration will become one of the biggest issues for 'posthistorical states') — csalisbury

You've persuaded me to read it now. Like many, I've been ignorantly dismissing it for years.

having an impeachment inquiry is the only way to educate the public on whether or not to vote for him in 2020 — 3017amen

I see what you're saying, but it looks like a big mistake to me.

Yes, and we call that process an election, which will take place in just over 13 months. — aletheist

This is the most important point. I neither know nor care if Trump's actions are grounds for impeachment. What seems clear though is that there's a lot of ambiguity and disagreement about it. In those circumstances, pursuing impeachment is suicidal and likely to set back the liberal cause in the US for many years, as it will be seen as an establishment counter-revolution. So just from a tactical point of view, all anti-Trump efforts have to be about getting him voted out. Trouble is I'm not sure the Democrats are up to the challenge.

This historical background is really interesting: http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

I think it counts as an argument for option 3, and without, I think, requiring any special "invirtuation of the masses", in csal's words (unless the social changes that accompany the introduction of some kind of democratic socialism count as invirtuation).

Indeed. And can it be a coincidence that the idea, the tragedy of the commons, originated in the early 19th century, at the culmination of the enclosures? Generally it's a justification for either of Banno's first two solutions, primarily privatization.

That's not to say that it's never been a problem. It certainly is, in certain social circumstances.

Come on you two, you're embarrassing yourselves.

Apparently Fukuyama studied under Derrida at Yale. The guy who engineered modern neoconservatism, helped get us embroiled in Iraq - he was gonna be a cont-lit guy. Later, Derrida strikes him down in Spectres of Marx. this is weird. Kissinger era realism went though a continental bottleneck and got us post 911 us policy — csalisbury

Possible plot for a new Adam Curtis documentary?

I agree

Not much philosophy over the past few months, mainly research before and after my move to Moscow. These are the highlights:

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog & The Master and Margarita
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
John Medhurst, No Less than Mystic (that rare thing, a Leftist anti-Bolshevik history of the revolution)
Abraham Ascher, Russia: a Short History
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia
Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991
China Mieville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

And a little light economics:

Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to my Daughter
Joseph Choonara, Reader's Guide to Marx's Capital
Karl Marx, Capital (decades since I read it)

A small semantic point, but you should be using the term "sexual behaviour", not "sexual orientation". — Michael

I think the idea is more radical and interesting than that, namely that one intentionally takes on a different sexual orientation by sheer political will. It's radical and interesting because we're accustomed now to thinking that sexual orientation is not chosen, so self-consciously choosing a different one becomes a striking act of subversion. At least, that seems to be the idea.

There are some responses that seem quite hysterical here over the suggestion that women can exercise their right to withhold sex, calling it a "tantrum," "hate speech," — Artemis

Fair enough. Although I don't think their rude dismissiveness was a reaction to the idea that women choose to "withhold sex" from men, but to the arresting idea that feminists' avoidance of heterosexual relationships is in some way progressive.