This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, Charles E. Cobb Jr.

I'm not going to ask you to clarify this because I suspect that you'll just continue waltzing sideways instead of discussing the issue. — frank

Okay, so discussion is over then, I guess.

On the other, you condemn the White House for supplying aid to Ukraine. — frank

Military aid. It has refused to support proposals for diplomatic negotiations that could lead to peace, even when these proposals have come from Ukrainians themselves.

The US appears to have an agenda for Ukraine, and doesn't care if the Ukrainians agree or not.

The US doesn't need to do this single handedly. Lots of other countries, particularly those in NATO, are aligning with its goals. Just like Russia is not single handedly taking on Ukraine; it has support from other countries (Belarus, Iran, India...).

The White House has stated that its position on this conflict is that by supplying Ukraine with a seemingly-inexhaustable supply of military aide, it will bring about peace in Ukraine. War is peace.

The article I linked already has some discussion about what this is, but basically it appears to be that the US wants to prolong this war to "weaken Russia". What weakening Russia means is less important imo than the consequences of doing so, e.g. thousands of dead Ukrainians and Russians.

Military support or complete abandonment are not the only possible options, though they are the only ones that are given to Ukraine by the US and some of its allies.

https://jacobin.com/2022/05/peace-talks-diplomacy-negotiations-ukraine-russia-war-biden-johnson

Notably, other countries have kept pressing for peace, or at least cease-fires. Why hasn't the US?

Why?

Pretty much hit the nail on the head imo. It seems like western liberals displace nationalistic feelings into that of other countries in order to have a socially-acceptable way to express it. Nationalism about one's country is bad, but nationalism about another country is perfectly fine. The similarities between cheering for a favorite sports team and cheering for a client state in a proxy war is striking.

t seems as if people have long forgotten that similar wars where on one Super Power's enemy was eagerly supported by the other Super Power were more of the norm in the Cold War. — ssu

Communication between the nuclear superpowers has deteriorated a great deal. The diplomacy that existed a few decades ago no longer exists. If there were already several extremely close calls back then, it stands to reason that we're in an even more delicate situation now that communication is gone.

One of the big reasons given for why Western countries need to support Ukraine is because Putin is seen as a bully who is hell-bent on imperialist expansion, and that if the West does not stop Putin, he will just continue on to invade other countries. The analogy is drawn between Putin and Hitler - appeasement of Hitler didn't work, and it won't work here with Putin. The support of Ukraine - particularly the military of Ukraine - is considered to be a humanitarian imperative.

It is doubtful that this would be sufficient reason by itself to justify sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, particularly when there are even worse crises occurring in the world in which the West is conspicuously not involved in, in the way it is involved in Ukraine.

What really seems to be the reason the West is so obsessed with this regional conflict is that this is the perfect opportunity to drain the resources of Russia in a prolonged proxy war. It gets dressed up as a moral crisis ("democracy is threatened by the ravaging Russian hordes").

The reality is that the West is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.

There is also the ideological premise that it is rational and honorable to defend one's country against a foreign invader. Fleeing from one's country when it is attacked by another country is considered cowardly and there is an incredibly strong distaste of people who do so. I recall a particularly interesting paragraph in one of David Graeber's essays that touches on this premise:

Most people dislike wars and feel the world would be a better place without them. Yet contempt for cowardice seems to move them on a far deeper level. After all, desertion—the tendency of conscripts called up for their first experience of military glory to duck out of the line of march and hide in the nearest forest, gulch, or empty farmhouse and then, when the column has safely passed, figure out a way to return home—is probably the greatest threat to wars of conquest. Napoleon’s armies, for instance, lost far more troops to desertion than to combat. Conscript armies often have to deploy a significant percentage of their conscripts behind the lines with orders to shoot any of their fellow conscripts who try to run away. Yet even those who claim to hate war often feel uncomfortable celebrating desertion.

About the only real exception I know of is Germany, which has erected a series of monuments labeled “To the Unknown Deserter.” The first and most famous, in Potsdam, is inscribed: “TO A MAN WHO REFUSED TO KILL HIS FELLOW MAN.” Yet even here, when I tell friends about this monument, I often encounter a sort of instinctive wince. “I guess what people will ask is: Did they really desert because they didn’t want to kill others, or because they didn’t want to die themselves?” As if there’s something wrong with that.

[...]

as anyone familiar with the history of, say, Oceania, Amazonia, or Africa would be aware, a great many societies simply refused to organize themselves on military lines. Again and again, we encounter descriptions of relatively peaceful communities who just accepted that every few years, they’d have to take to the hills as some raiding party of local bad boys arrived to torch their villages, rape, pillage, and carry off trophy parts from hapless stragglers. The vast majority of human males have refused to spend their time training for war, even when it was in their immediate practical interest to do so. — David Graeber

Probably living under Russian dominion would be worse than living under Ukrainian dominion, but getting butchered on the battlefield is by far the worst and it seems absolutely ridiculous to claim that Ukrainian sovereignty is worth this risk.

Excellent points, thank you for your reply. :100:

I am genuinely curious to hear what people have to say about the following questions:

• What would be (or have been) the consequences to the Ukrainian people if the Ukrainian state ceded (or had ceded) territory to the Russian state?
• What would be (or have been) the consequences to the Russian people if the Russian state withdrew from occupied Ukrainian territory (or never invaded in the first place)?
• What would be (or have been) the long-term geopolitical consequences if the Ukrainian state ceded (or had ceded) territory to the Russian state?
• What would be (or have been) the long-term geopolitical consequences if the Russian state had withdrew from occupied Ukrainian territory (or never invaded in the first place)?

In another thread, I said:

A person might prefer to live under a Ukrainian rather than a Russian government, but might also think that they would prefer to live in general; that both governments are bad and that the Ukrainian one is just the lesser evil; that whatever evils come with Russian dominion, that the real potential for torture and death out in the battlefield are worse, etc. — _db

This quote should give some context into why I am asking these questions. I'm not trying to troll here. Tons of people are getting injured and killed and I want to know why this needs to happen.

The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard.
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, Amia Srinivasan.
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy or, How Capitalism Works - and How It Fails, Yanis Varoufakis.

Which is more important, to have a good character or to be useful? — schopenhauer1

It depends on prior value judgements and the context in which the question is asked. It is meaningless to ask what is more important without first clarifying these points.

You might as well ask whether a fleece coat or sunscreen is more important. It depends, what's the weather like?

Beat me to it!

:fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire:

The only real important distinction to be made between people is by economic class - haves and have-nots; most everything else is derived from this, I think. Of course, those who have the capital will invest in technology that supports their continued ownership of capital - and sometimes they will even oppose technological progress that threatens this ownership. According to Ellul, this is one of the reasons why capitalism will disappear; the goal of capitalism is not the same as the goal of technical efficiency - it's not efficient enough.

Really though, nobody understands the entirety of a complex modern machine (including social machines like governments). They may understand how to use it, or understand a single component by itself (which is useless by itself), or the may have a vague high-level understanding of how all the components work together, but no single person can possibly understand a machine in its entirety, let alone all of the machines that are now used in our lives; nor can the average person have any real say on anything either.

Gone are the days where tool-making went alongside tool-using, with every step of the process being understood by everyone. Now we have experts, specialization, technological giantism, etc.

Interesting, so what are your objections to this, considering you had previously expressed doubt that Russia sabotaged their own pipeline?

So I find it hard to explain how the catastrophic sabotage of both pipelines (it looks like they are gone for good) could benefit Russia. — SophistiCat

Just spitballing:

Lots of Russian oligarchs see the war is going poorly; they just want to pull back the troops and reopen for business so they can start making money again. Putin blowing up the NS2 pipeline could be his way of telling these oligarchs that he is committed to this war and that there's no going back now.

Another reason it might have been sabotaged by Russia is to garner support for the general mobilization, which is also unpopular. An attack on a key Russian economic asset by NATO could be used to persuade the Russian people that this war is needed.

A good deal of LNG reserves are held outside of Russian territory. If Russia defaults, they lose these reserves.

It has always been thus. Nothing has changed. I am sure that pre-technology the world was just as mysterious as it is today. Life has always been disconnected from what has sustained it. — RussellA

The workings of the universe to prehistoric humans would have been mysterious, but there would have been a reverence to the mystery as well. More importantly though, a person and their clan would be able to take care of themselves, making impactful decisions that truly drive the direction in which they live. Goals that were set were clearly defined by those who achieved them, and required the use of the capacities of the entire body. Tools consisted of mechanisms that were understood by everyone who used them.

The modern world is mysterious, but in a mundane and/or perplexing way. Our goals are frequently not defined by us, and the tools we use are always disconnected from our own understanding entirely or nearly so. We use only a subset of our body's capabilities to live - which makes the body atrophy, unless one engages in a clownish routine of maintenance to give the illusion that one's body is being used for what it was meant to be used for. We survive not through our own autonomous efforts but because we satisfy some needed role in an artificial system.

Is it any wonder that people are so miserable?

What motivates the neo-Luddite worldview? — Bret Bernhoft

Skepticism of the potential of technology to improve our lives rather than the opposite, based on historical trends and on emerging scientific research into the interaction between technology and power.

Life in general is like that. A mix of general constraints and particularised choices. We can turn food into a moral dilemma. But we still must eat food. Go figure. And I didn’t invent this world. I just comment on how it is. — apokrisis

Having a good understanding of how the world works is a prerequisite for living life in relative comfort and avoiding the worst that it has to throw at you. It is good advice to tell someone that they must learn to set more modest expectations for reality; to correctly perceive nature and by doing so learn to participate in it. Go with the flow.

That being said, the human mind dreams about how the world could be better, even if it contradicts fundamental constraints of reality. It is in the nature of a human being that they will strive for conditions that are impossible to attain.

Perhaps if a square were conscious, it might wish it were a cube - but it is stuck in two-dimensional geometry. If reality is a river, then humans are the little eddies that briefly emerge, opposing the current, before being swallowed up again.

Metaphors aside, humans want more than reality can provide. We always have and we always will.

Is it just coincidence that resolving these modern issues, even to the complete satisfaction of the complainants, would have absolutely no impact on the capitalist class at all? — Isaac

Yeah I think this is a common criticism leftists make of liberals. They want to reform the system, make it "nicer", but don't want to fundamentally change the way it works. It's all surface-level, appearance-based, superficial and totally impotent. There's so much energy wasted on crap that ends up just improving the capitalist system.

This is something that seems to have happened across social justice movements. Like, second-wave feminists were hard-core. People were scared of them. And there was a heavy current of socialist thought involved in it as well, it really was a revolutionary-minded wave.

Nowadays it's mostly lukewarm, apathetic "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" slacktivism that is more of a corporate HR propaganda tool than anything else and ends up produces mind-numbingly stupid shit like this.

We acknowledge that TikTok dances may not have been the greatest tactic to get the SCOTUS draft rejected, but please understand that this was part of a greater awareness campaign.

What the fuck??

By not being a fucking idiot, lol

Is there a broader ideological system that you ascribe to? I have some guesses but I don't want to make any assumptions.

With regards to the poor white male's grievance or the rich black trans lesbian's, I have little sympathy for either. Both are clutching at exculpatory narratives, both are looking to distract attention from the fact that their very lifestyles are an act of oppression against the actual poor - the sweatshop worker, the peasant farmer, the modern slave. — Isaac

It seems to me that in order to help other people, you have to take care of yourself first. Devoting a significant amount of time and energy to aiding the modern slaves of the world requires that certain conditions be met in your own life. But I can't define what the threshold is between justified self-care and gratuitous self-care, it seems fuzzy.

I think that if there is anything to criticize about the social justice movements in developed countries, it's the way they have been commodified and turned into just another avenue for consumption.

Too often 'free speech' is confused with a right to be taken seriously. The right to be taken seriously is earnt, it's not a birthright. — Isaac

:100:

All opinions welcome — SackofPotatoeJam

My opinion is that we are rapidly closing in on the point of no return, and given that peaceful attempts to resolve global warming have all but failed, violence will likely be the only option going forth.

I hope you can understand the importance of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech includes things you don't like to hear. Trust me, as much as it drags me down that people to this day still do not believe in global warming, I feel the best way to reach them is to allow them to share their thoughts, and get to the root of the problem by engaging in personal discussions with them. — SackofPotatoeJam

Denying global warming should be treated with complete and unconditional disdain. Freedom of speech does not preclude the public shaming and ostracizing of those who abuse it.

Interesting perspective. Just speculating, but I think we can see the mistreatment of homosexuals in economic terms as well, as they would not produce heirs to a lineage.

Just because those two minority struggles were parallel to class struggle in their goal of unshackling said minorities from their economic ostracism, doesn't mean we can just subsume any other minority struggle in class struggle. — Isaac

Sure, I agree with that. Not every form of oppression is based on class struggle.

If the straight white man experiences oppression, it is not because he is white, straight and a man, but because he is part of the working class in the capitalist system. That is the only form of oppression that the straight white man can legitimately claim to be suffering from.

The straight white men that complain about reverse racism or reverse sexism need an explanation for why their lives suck, and they incorrectly and stupidly attribute it to the social justice movements of women and minorities, rather than capitalism. The privileges they have (as straight white men) are a crutch (that come at the expense of other people), and they despise anyone who threatens to take that crutch away from them, rather than questioning why they even need a crutch to begin with.

I did not mean to imply that straight white males should be the vanguard of a new class consciousness for the working class. The class consciousness already exists and has been developed by people of all backgrounds. Straight white men merely need to wake up and join.

The people who complain about reverse racism or reverse sexism are usually white, straight, cisgender men, and one of the kernels of their complaints tends to be what they perceive to be a double standard in the way society treats them.

They feel as if everyone but themselves is allowed a social narrative that they can identify with and can be proud about. Why can't white people have White Lives Matter? Why can't men have a men's rights movement? Why can't heterosexual people have straight pride events?

All of this is actually just a jealousy of class solidarity and a fear of losing privileges. Straight white men feel "left out" and isolated, as if nobody cares about them. The thinking goes: "if I really am so privileged as everyone else is saying I am, then why am I not happy? And if the gay snowflakes get what they want, I'll lose what little I have!"

In reality, the vast majority of them belong to the same class as everyone else: the working class. If straight white men developed class consciousness, this jealousy of other people different from them would dissolve, because they would have a support group and a meaningful social narrative in which they could place themselves. The fear of other people different from them would also dissolve, as they would identity with these folk as fellows of the working class. There would be an understanding that other people different from them, while belonging to the working class, also experience further forms of oppression that straight white men do not.

Just gonna leave this here:



I fucking love Shaun & Jen

Good points, as usual :clap:

:strong: :100:

Sounds like regular ol' racism/sexism to me. — Tzeentch

No, it's personal prejudice, which is a psychological defense mechanism that is sometimes warranted, given the context of a situation.

But we don't want to give a licence to any form of racism or sexism. None of it is acceptable. — Baden

People who are oppressed have the right to be prejudiced against their oppressors.

Historically, we simply don't value the lives of men as much as we do women. — 64bithuman

Historically, we have valued the reproductive capabilities of women, which is not the same thing as valuing their lives.

and yet we don't really seem to care very much about and of these issues, certainly not as much as we care about women's issues. — 64bithuman

These issues hardly ever get mentioned except as ammunition against those who bring up the issues of minorities and women. wHaT AbOuT tHe MeN??!?

There aren't very many movements or organizations that address men's issues for the sake of these issues (and not to just spite feminists), and those that do exist only do so by piggy-backing on the success of the feminist waves.

Finished:

• The Color Purple, Alice Walker: great read.
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin: it was okay.
• Ubik, Philip K. Dick: friggin amazing!

I think that conscription works if there is among the majority of citizens a collective understanding that universal military service is needed and that basically the threat comes from outside the state/society. — ssu

What threat?

You might as well say "without Nazism there might not be any human rights, since that's the way history played out". — Isaac

Off-topic, but nauseatingly enough, this is exactly what Yuval Noah Harari argues in Sapiens: apparently, racism and eugenics were discredited because the Nazis lost the war. Shit book :vomit:

I recall reading about a Russian tactic in WW2 where orders were given to shoot soldiers retreating from battle. — Agent Smith

This is an exaggeration. The main purpose of the blocking troops were to prevent uncontrolled and panicked retreats. Most of the retreating troops were sent off to the front again and only a small minority were actually executed.

To justify forcing people to fight a war (by claiming it's for their own good), it must be clear that things would be more bad than war. And that's a pretty tall order since war is really, really bad. — Isaac

Right, exactly.

On the other hand, there is some evidence to support the claim that retaliatory action is an effective way to deal with bullies (tit-for-tat, Axelrod). If nobody resisted the invasion of Ukraine, this would likely only encourage more bad Russian behavior - if nobody resists, then they're gonna take everything they can for themselves. But the problem then is that the Ukrainian power structure took it upon itself to decide how the resistance would happen.

Maybe there's a more effective way to resist Russian dominion, but if this would entail the destruction of the Ukrainian power structure, it's not considered. First and foremost the military of a country serves to protect the interests of the existing power structure; human life is not the number-one priority. And the media can be used to trick people into thinking that the interests of the people are the same as the interests of the power structure.

At the end of WWII, Hitler & Co. ordered children and the elderly to defend Berlin, tooth and nail. That's obviously just a total waste of human life - the corrupt and evil leadership were just throwing away their own citizens so they could cling to power for a few more days. If the same thing were to happen in Ukraine though, there would be worldwide sympathy, the media would portray the child soldiers as martyrs, etc - yet it would largely be the same thing, just the leadership of a country trying to hold on to their positions of power for as long as possible, regardless of the costs.

David Graeber writes:

I have never understood why this mass slaughter of Iraqi men isn’t considered a war crime. It’s clear that, at the time, the U.S. command feared it might be. [...] It makes sense that the elites were worried. These were, after all, mostly young men who’d been drafted and who, when thrown into combat, made precisely the decision one would wish all young men in such a situation would make: saying to hell with this, packing up their things, and going home. For this, they should be burned alive?

On some level, let’s face it: these men were cowards. They got what they deserved.

[...]

There seems, indeed, a decided lack of sympathy for noncombatant men in war zones. Even reports by international human rights organizations speak of massacres as being directed almost exclusively against women, children, and, perhaps, the elderly. The implication, almost never stated outright, is that adult males are either combatants or have something wrong with them. (“You mean to say there were people out there slaughtering women and children and you weren’t out there defending them? What are you? Chicken?”)

[...]

About the only real exception I know of is Germany, which has erected a series of monuments labeled “To the Unknown Deserter.” The first and most famous, in Potsdam, is inscribed: “TO A MAN WHO REFUSED TO KILL HIS FELLOW MAN.” Yet even here, when I tell friends about this monument, I often encounter a sort of instinctive wince. “I guess what people will ask is: Did they really desert because they didn’t want to kill others, or because they didn’t want to die themselves?” As if there’s something wrong with that.

[...]

Nevertheless, as anyone familiar with the history of, say, Oceania, Amazonia, or Africa would be aware, a great many societies simply refused to organize themselves on military lines. Again and again, we encounter descriptions of relatively peaceful communities who just accepted that every few years, they’d have to take to the hills as some raiding party of local bad boys arrived to torch their villages, rape, pillage, and carry off trophy parts from hapless stragglers.

It seems the OP has lost interest anyway, — Isaac

Sorry, just been busy with stuff. I have been monitoring this thread and reflecting on things though.

The oddity the OP is picking up on is that in the case of war, the decision (of literally life and death magnitude) is not only removed from any democratic process, but removed from personal choice too. — Isaac

:up:

... maybe pick another bookseller? — Isaac

:100: