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The gradual extinction of softness

hippocampusmagazine.com

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Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#71

Post by thaumasiotes »

jhgb wrote: post #10
stickfigure wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think China is going to use biological weapons to conquer Taiwan? I mean, why not just throw a few nukes in too?

> I mean, why not just throw a few nukes in too? Perhaps they'd want to keep the existing infrastructure for themselves? That's hard to do if you turn Taiwan into a pool of lava...

China is not ideologically able to turn Taiwan into a pool of lava. It's a Chinese province populated by Chinese people. They can take control, they can suppress it brutally, but anything that might suggest they value the general run of people living there less than they value the people living in Jiangsu is a nonstarter.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#72

Post by DeathArrow »

bsanr wrote: post #18

It's frustrating to me that my potential enjoyment of this piece, lauded as it is by several of the comments that are already here, was poisoned by the introduction. I imagine that >I ran to visit my friend Yet, who lived in the village behind my parents’ house in Battambang, Cambodia. will come off as innocuous to many, but my immediate impression was, "Wait... like a plantation?". I'm not intimately familiar with C…

Blaming all the evils in the world on capitalism is obtuse.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#73

Post by Haga »

bsanr wrote: post #56
netcan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a first person recollection of a nine year old girl's experience surviving two revolutionary civil wars and a genocide. Not incidentally, the sentiments you express were the precise sentiments weaponised to fuel and justify this bloodbath. Stopping at paragraph one to " yeah but she's a bouge.... " is a mark of zealotry. As to "sightedness," which I take as meaning obligatory mentions of class issues, imperia…

[flagged]

Ah, yes the intellectual version of west centrism. The murderous hord marched the victims down the old road thus Roman's are to blame. Swooping criticism like that has no sting and is unlikely to sway future road builders.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#74

Post by DeathArrow »

SiVal wrote: post #31
VictorPath wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real "break with tradition" was America and the CIA ousting Prince Sihanouk, who had been fighting militant communists, but was in dialog with the non-militant Cambodian left. A puppet Lon Nol was put at the helm, and the US then invaded eastern Cambodia (and shot Kent State students protesting that invasion) and carpet bombed the Cambodian countryside. This is what began the destabilization of Cambodia. Prince S…

The implementation of the leftist utopian visions that torture and murder and silence and "re-educate" millions and send millions more desperate refugees fleeing out to die at sea in little, overloaded boats trying to escape is not usually described as "liberation" by those, such as my family and many friends, who managed to survive these visionaries.

If we look at how the things are evolving, the left might be planning another "liberation".

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#75

Post by sien »

anticodon wrote: post #70
jokethrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call deaths in the USSR "accidental". Starving and executing kulaks was no accident, they were punishing the rich. People worked to death in the gulags were not an accident. They may have killed less people per year compared to Nazis but that doesn't make them less deadly. In terms of sheer human loss for society, they were 4 times worse than the Nazis (according to your estimate). If you consider how much…

Also, one closely guarded secret nobody cares about: currently amount of people in prisons in USA is almost equal to the number of people sent to prisons and camps by Stalin. So, who's more evil?

The one who did this:

"This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[7] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[8][9] some 390,000[10] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[11] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[12] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[13] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][14]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#76

Post by nickff »

anticodon wrote: post #67
thanhhaimai wrote: post #16

Pol Pot and his government was responsible for the death of 1/4 Cambodian population in a short amount of time, not counting deaths from neighboring countries. A lot of Cambodians migrated to Vietnam (including the author of this wonderful piece). The history about this period is interesting if you're looking for a good read. It's not being widely taught, even during Vietnamese K12 education. https://en.m.wikipedia.o…

Pol Pot came to power due to USA backed coup. USA spies tried to kill king of Cambodia multiple times but failed. So, they taught and financed guerillas to oust the king by means of military coup and install a pro-USA government. Pro-USA government didn't last long, and Pol Pot took its place. And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government. US…

>” And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government.”

According to Wikipedia, the USA did not materially support the Khmer Rouge, though they did vote in favor of certain UN resolutions which favored the regime. Do you have some evidence or support for your claims?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#78

Post by domdib »

iammjm wrote: post #77

What an incredible read. The protagonist has a non profit organisation that provides food and vocational training to Cambodian women in similar situation: http://mekongblue.com/ - there is a donation button and it only takes 3 minutes to donate via PayPal

Thank you.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#79

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

emodendroket wrote: post #62

> I’ve often wondered why, in a poor country where women work as hard as men to feed their children, feminine softness is so highly prized. As for me, I no longer consider it a valuable attribute. Isn't this its own answer? It's prized precisely because it is unattainable for most.

Because she's describing what is more accurately self-effacing stoicism, and subservience, not precisely "softness"? Endurance and self-sacrifice are not soft.

e.g.:

> A good Asian woman is supposed to shine dimly, like a moon, and reflect her husband’s sunlight.

Not that she's completely sold on that model either.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#80

Post by watwut »

BurningFrog wrote: post #57
gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I think when comparing the deadliness of ideologies, the true measure should be something like mortality/(time x population) For example, the Nazis killed 11M over 12 years and the German population was about 70M in 1939. Thus, their deadliness is 11/(70x12) ~ 1/70 The USSR killed 40M (a middling estimate) over about 70 years and the Soviet population was 170M in 1939, so their deadliness is 40/(170x80) ~ 1/340…

> For example, the Nazis killed 11M over 12 years and the German population was about 70M in 1939. Thus, their deadliness is 11/(70x12) ~ 1/70 I don't have real numbers, but I'd guess at least 95% of the people the Nazis killed were foreigners. So that math makes little sense.

Yep. Even ignoring non-Jewish victims, majority of holocaust victims were foreign Jews and not Germans of Jewish descent. Mostly because Europe and Africa as a whole had more Jews then Germany itself.

Ignoring Jews, Germans were more ruthless and murderous toward Polish or Russian people then toward western ones. And they much more ruthless and murderous toward western then toward Germans themself. (And yes they were ruthless and murderous toward German population too.)

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