301–310 of 349 posts
Looking back at life in North America, it looks so crude and old fashioned. People are constantly bitching about politics and one party or the other. Karen's are ratting everyone and wanting to see the manager.
Is life perfect here? Hell no.
But it seems in the west we are fighting over the past instead of fighting over the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US military is a money pit. Yes, but it's a very visible money pit. Its purpose is to discourage any other country from throwing their own money into a similar pit by competing.
We could have spent a quarter of the money we did and had the same outcome. There's absolutely no reason for the US to subsidize peace for the rest of the planet to the degree that it does. Every other liberal democracy on Earth gets to enjoy affordable housing, subsidized healthcare, affordable or free college educations, pensions, and a nice fat bank of vacation hours every year. We get a bunch of morons in blue wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At this point there a multiple “factions” who’s end vision of society is actively hostile to certain other factions. Some time ago there was even an active shooting war between US factions, and yet the country still was ascendant afterwards.
Sure, when the nation was still pretty young and the world was much different with many great powers, there was a civil war. Do you really think the US could maintain dominance if half the nation went to war with itself again, in more modern times? Not that I think any future conflict would be remotely similar.
No, not really. But... I don’t really have any way of knowing. I just have to remind myself that, as ugly as it has gotten, it used to be a whole lot worse, and we survived and thrived, and so maybe we can do it again.
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"US soon being able to just stack depleted uranium telephone poles in orbit to protect it's dependencies" Rods from God is actually real? Thought it was a failed research project?
It's a question of economics. A 20,000 kg rod costs $200m to launch into LEO at $10k/kg. At $200/kg it's only $4m. Uranium price per kilo seems reasonable at $60/kg, so we're getting to a point where the raw material cost is not that different from the getting the damn thing to LEO. If you can get each complete rod down to say $200m, ie the cost of a cruise missle for the DOD, that's a pretty impressive capability.
Im not sure what cruise missiles are you talking about?
It's very hard to disagree IMO. The west is in decline and unless something catastrophic happens in PRC or war breaks out (also pretty catastrophic) I can't see any future where the PRC isn't going to at least become on par with the US soon but most likely it will succeed it as top dog. The only question in my mind is where do the EU end up in all this and if Russia will become closer with PRC or EU. IMO the biggest…
The West is on the rise technologically and in decline socially. But I wouldn't be too quick to call the decline irreversible . The democracy is still in a good shape despite some challenges. The West went through many crises. This is not the first one, and not the last one. So far, nothing indicates that the social crisis is irreversible and the West won't be able to bounce back.
On an optimistic note, I am not convinced that China is going to win any cultural wars. America, for all its problems, still is essentially a leader for much of the developing world, at least in terms of culture. People watch American shows, know American celebrities, listen to American music, etc. This is facilitated by the fact that these cultural elements are pretty diverse and are open to immigrants. As in, a guy…
I'd say Korea is actually winning the cultural war. K-pop has taken the world by storm. Hollywood is in decline, if you'll notice, good movies are harder to come by nowadays.
The west is in decline because progressive values don't promote strength. They focus on class and are inherently divisive. Ironically, they only blossom in strong societies. The decline will allow other societies with a more conservative philosophy to take over and it will be their turn in a few centuries to succumb to the same tragedy. The baizuo tragedy.
The west is in decline because progressive values don't promote strength. They focus on class and are inherently divisive. Ironically, they only blossom in strong societies. The decline will allow other societies with a more conservative philosophy to take over and it will be their turn in a few centuries to succumb to the same tragedy. The baizuo tragedy.
> because progressive values don't promote strength. Venice in the 1400s, London in the 1685-1700 Paris 1875-1914 vienna 1890-1914 London in the 1960s All of these cities flourished because they were progressive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Today though, conservatives are mad about what exactly?… It seems like they're mad about a generalized disrespect which the mainstream culture has towards them. And fair enough, they aren't imagining that. It's a bit more than that. A growing proportion of conservatives see the world very differently than their left-wing counterparts. This is most easily demonstrated at the moment by the fact that 60% of self-ident…
I’ve heard my right wing family members talk about voter fraud since at least 2000, but it’s basically a symptom of the bigger problem, which is a failure of belief in human nature. Changing the topic briefly, how do I know that 9/11 was not an “inside job”? Do I know anything about whether jet fuel melts steel or surveillance of the Pentagon hit, etc.? No, I do not. How then? Well, I know human nature, and so I know…
If you enter the conversation believing that, then I suppose you have no way of knowing. It's reasonable that people tell you you're wrong and that your belief is crazy. The difference that I see is that people don't tend to tell you that you - specifically you - are evil because of your beliefs.
> How then? Well, I know human nature, and so I know a conspiracy involving thousands of people cannot be hidden successfully for twenty years.
I'm not so sure about that.
Consider that the F-117 first flew in 1981 but wasn't made public until 1988.
MKUltra was operational from 1953-1973 but wasn't mentioned at all in the public record until 1975 during a Senate hearing. There were very few details made public then, and it wasn't until the mid 1990s that the full scope of the project started to come to light. I remember when "MKUltra" was really only something discussed in conspiracy circles; I first heard the name on Coast to Coast AM in the early 2000s.
> Okay, so was there widespread voter fraud in 2020? Prior elections? I’m not an expert in election monitoring, but again, I know about human nature and the mainstream media, so I know that if there were, it would be known.
First, let me clarify that I don't even have a strong position on this. I don't think it's likely that voter fraud was a deciding factor in the 2020 election, nor that it happened significantly more or less than in prior elections.
That said, looking at this objectively, you assert "if there were, it would be known." According to the polling I referenced in the GP, it is "known" by ~60% of GOP voters.
> But the Republicans have decided they just don’t believe in Americans anymore,
This strikes me as a non sequitur. They don't trust the prevailing narrative - which again, I strongly believe is likely to be the truth - but it doesn't follow that they "don't believe in Americans."
> so they don’t trust anything.
THIS is the core issue I see. Putting myself in the shoes of a stereotypical GOP voter, I would be distrustful of the media due to their extensive coverage of "Russiagate" (which I would see as having been either a complete fabrication or a partisan witch hunt) and their silence on the "Hunter Biden's laptop" story (which I would be confident would have been the primary issue in the election if it had not been covered up). I would be distrustful of social media due to what has been presented to me as the ongoing suppression of conservative voices across multiple platforms, followed by the aggressive deplatforming of Trump on Jan 7th. Finally, I would be distrustful of the government itself because of the "Deep State" narrative that Trump and others have repeatedly reinforced over the past ~5 years.
At that point... who would I trust? Where would I turn to find facts? From that perspective, it looks like there has been a consistent and successful campaign to keep me from being able to trust every single previously reliable source of information.
> It makes unity impossible. I think the only cure unless something really changes is divorce.
I completely agree with you. The way things are today, the two "sides" here have irreconcilable differences. Whether or not they want to work together is honestly largely irrelevant; they each believe the other to be both malicious and to have a long history of deception.
I truly don't see a clear path forward that maintains these two communities living in the same polity.
On an optimistic note, I am not convinced that China is going to win any cultural wars. America, for all its problems, still is essentially a leader for much of the developing world, at least in terms of culture. People watch American shows, know American celebrities, listen to American music, etc. This is facilitated by the fact that these cultural elements are pretty diverse and are open to immigrants. As in, a guy…
Judging by the race turmoil in the West, being an ethnostate is the only sane thing to do. China's taking care of China and the Chinese, while the West are busy repenting for the crimes that happened hundreds of years ago. And as you've noticed yourself, China's happy to manipulate Hollywood into publishing what they want, no need to create their own.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've had to warn you about this multiple times before. That's seriously not cool, and if you keep doing it we will ban you.