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Talkin’ about a Revolution

drb.ie

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Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#91

Post by mardifoufs »

boxed wrote: post #76
mardifoufs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all cool. But it's just standard deflection from the tens of thousands of deaths that the Biden administration directly enabled. And Arabs living in Israel doesn't magically make all the very public statements that Israel made (like that they wanted to level the city to the ground, and displace its population once and for all), repeatedly and throughout the entire Gaza operation just go away.

Israel didn't make those statements. Specific members of radical parties did. Imagine judging a country by their worst people. I bet your country would fare quite badly.

IDF generals did. Who else would you consider credible in representing what the IDF intended to do? Regardless I wasn't trying to make this about Israel's actions. But rather about what Biden (and didn't do) with Israel.

He didn't even go as far as condemn the radical parties that you mentioned. Absolutely no red line, or anything. Just complete carte blanche. Again, even Bush or Reagan didn't let Israel do whatever they want with no political repercussions. Israel knew back then that some lines couldn't be crossed without losing American support. With Biden, they did whatever they wanted, said whatever they wanted and took advantage of that.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#92

Post by jddj »

facile3232 wrote: post #77
eMPee584 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, coincidentally, that is just the time window of the technological singularity.. where we either ascend to a peace- & powerful interplanetary civilization - or accidentally eradicate ourselves out of a collective lack of wisdom and sense of connectedness. Let's play..

I think the "technological singularity" is just the rapture for people who listen to sam harris

Not to take anything away from this witty comment, but I think Harris is more on the doomer side?

Maybe that's what you meant after all.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#93

Post by graemep »

rongrobert wrote: post #89
baxtr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extrapolation from what he knows about history. Things looked very bleak right after the French revolution for example. We see our history as a dot, because we live in it. But people in the future will take a more long-term view and might say: oh this was a difficult phase in history.

I just don't agree with any of this. This is a difficult time compared to what? The black plague? WW1? This is the easiest time ever to be alive. I would say on a 200 year time line though, the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church, the internet has broke democracy. The idea democracy is ascendant is pretty delusional IMO. This professor is still living in the unipolar moment that has passed.

> the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church

I think it is more accurate to say it broke the power of the aristocracy by causing a labour shortage.

The black death happened in the 14th century, the reformation in the 16th

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#94

Post by dachworker »

What strikes me is how much of these current geopolitical events are driven by singular individuals whose current inclinations were shaped by their very arbitrary past encounters. For example, if you take the current US administration's hostility towards Europe. That might just be the result of the Vice President being at Yale and encountering a few snobby children of European old money, and they might have been a bit too mean to him, and that might be the sole reason he has so much antipathy towards the whole of Europe.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#95

Post by DeathArrow »

hagbard_c wrote: post #69
thomassmith65 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we could organize gatherings where we purify ourselves of such works of degenerate literature by gathering all the copies we can find and burning them /s

That's the wrong way - the way of the likes of 'fascists' and 'anti-fascists' alike - to go at that problem. A better way is to point out where Hegelian thought can lead and has led in the past. No books need to be burned, more books need to be published and read while educational institutions should stop pushing books which promote the destructive aspects of Hegel's thoughts. Yes, that means that Howard Zinn should…

Exactly my view. People should be more educated, not less.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#96

Post by mola »

worldsayshi wrote: post #6

> frightened into rationality An oxymoron if I ever heard one. To become rational means letting go of fears (to a large extent). I fear that one reason we fail to act is that we are guided by fear. Fear makes us focus on the wrong things. And I fear that in a civilized society fear becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Fear makes us obsess about the problem and how to avoid it in the very narrow and short term. It does…

As I see it, Optimism is usually unrational but drives change and Fear kills optimism.

Trust is not purely rational its emotional. Fear kills trust, making you more rational in the sense that you assume other players are rationally adversarial.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#97

Post by [deleted] »

eMPee584 wrote: post #66
baxtr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

Oh, coincidentally, that is just the time window of the technological singularity.. where we either ascend to a peace- & powerful interplanetary civilization - or accidentally eradicate ourselves out of a collective lack of wisdom and sense of connectedness. Let's play..

[deleted]

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#98

Post by dachworker »

baxtr wrote: post #86
CalRobert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“democracy will continue to increase its footprint” What was this based on?

Extrapolation from what he knows about history. Things looked very bleak right after the French revolution for example. We see our history as a dot, because we live in it. But people in the future will take a more long-term view and might say: oh this was a difficult phase in history.

I do not think we have enough historical evidence for such an extrapolation. Human societies have been getting more and more complex, necessitating more and more complex governance. We are at a point of crisis, where the electorate is supposed to decide through voting, and our elected politicians are supposed to decide through legislation, on topics that neither the electorate, nor the elected are able to fully understand. It is not clear to me that democracy will triumph.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#99

Post by cess11 »

boxed wrote: post #75
totetsu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a muslim party in the Knesset. here is how they are treated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avEhWwouQ8k&lc=Ugz8DeAmwrGXX... >20% of the population of Israel are Palestinians with full rights. full rights to be evicted and have their homes demolished. https://www.newarab.com/news/land-ours-bedouins-fight-explus...

And even though they are treated badly, they still have voting rights . This is not Apartheid. It just isn't. > full rights to be evicted and have their homes demolished That case is being tried in courts. Such an action against blacks in South Africa would never have been in a court. Your sources prove my point.

Courts were an important part of south african apartheid, similar to how they are in Israel.

https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03l...

As was suffrage, the bantustans were in large part a solution to the risk that voting would change the balance in the national parliament. What you could vote for and what the dominant group could do to your candidates was used to reproduce and reinvent apartheid, similar to how it is used in Israel.

Another similarity is that the dominant groups in both societies are propped up by protestant christians. Yet another is using colonial practices in other countries to fund the local economy, like emerald mines in Zambia in the case of South Africa and diamonds being a main export of Israel.

Legally Israel is engaged in apartheid, which is a crime. I'd argue this in itself makes the state of Israel illegitimate, i.e. armed and other resistance towards it is either a moral obligation or at least permissible, that is, the mainstream position of early liberalism.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#100

Post by cess11 »

boxed wrote: post #76
mardifoufs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all cool. But it's just standard deflection from the tens of thousands of deaths that the Biden administration directly enabled. And Arabs living in Israel doesn't magically make all the very public statements that Israel made (like that they wanted to level the city to the ground, and displace its population once and for all), repeatedly and throughout the entire Gaza operation just go away.

Israel didn't make those statements. Specific members of radical parties did. Imagine judging a country by their worst people. I bet your country would fare quite badly.

Likud is a mainstream party in Israel. Their prime minister has been making genocidal and atrocious statements for a very long time. Mainstream television in Israel has been in overdrive to secure popular consent for absolutely obscene crimes for more than one and a half year.

80% of israeli jews in Israel approve of genocidal treatment of palestinians in the Gaza strip in the form of ethnic cleansing, while 14% believe the public statements about this from world leaders to be a distraction and 3% consider it immoral.

The broad israeli opposition, i.e. the large demonstrations in Tel Aviv and elsewhere and the politicians that support them, disagree with the government in which order to do things, not on whether the palestinians should be treated genocidally. They want to make the palestinians 'freyer', suckers, by signing any deal that brings israeli prisoners and hostages back and then continuing the genocidal process anyway. Meanwhile the government considers the prisoners and hostages better positioned in captivity, hence why they have been refusing negotiations, and then broke the ceasefire deal they went into earlier this year.

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