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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

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Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#471

Post by mmooss »

scandox wrote: post #293
mmooss wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LoTR had a great distrust of power as dangerous and corrupting - the Ring corrupted everyone who tried to use it - and a rejection of those who abided with evil. The mission was to destroy the power, not build a super-army.

Well in fact the raising of a huge army is indeed one of the goals of the protagonists. Of course for them the goal is to defeat evil. I'm sure that the people behind Palantir, Anduril and other such companies also believe they are building a military capability that will allow the United States to defeat what they see as evil. Every centre right libertarian I've encountered also has a "great distrust of power". All…

> raising of a huge army is indeed one of the goals of the protagonists

It's not. They always acknowledge that their army will be much too small to defeat Sauron's in a war. They luckily win a battle outside Gondor. They defeat Sauruman only with a deus ex machina moment of supernatural aid. But when they march on Mordor they send only a token force; they know they can't win that way. They can only slow down and distract Sauron.

The way they win is trust in innocence, a thing and a plan that Sauron can't even envision - that's explicitly Gandalf's thinking. Sauron never imagines that a couple of essentially civilian hobbits, the least powerful people, would be given the Ring, and that they'd enter Morder on their own, that they'd have the courage, and that the good guys would actually destroy something of that much power when they could use it.

> it only takes a small shift of perspective to see how the LoTR will appeal broadly to anyone who believes in good vs evil narratives

I agree in a way: People who don't read the book with a little thought can just read a superficial action adventure, good guys fight bad and win. And Peter Jackson's films are 90% the latter.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#472

Post by rpmisms »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #460
rpmisms wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By recognizing that both teams take away my autonomy at every opportunity? How does that make me part of the problem?

You don't recognize that, which is why your point of comparison to a random thing Trump did openly his first week in office had to be a secret program started 18 years ago and revealed 12 years ago. You just feel obligated to make it a both-sides thing, because you've internalized the idea that a wise or savvy person will always diagnose a problem as systemic rather than blaming specific individuals. I genuinely don'…

> will always diagnose a problem as systemic rather than blaming specific individuals.

We should bring back public executions; I have no problems blaming individual people. I'm just a little less extreme on HN, and Trump doing cartography is unimportant. The guy is an aesthete, he just happens to have the political will of the moment and might save our economy. I don't think so, but infinity illegal immigrants and more infinite debt is the alternative so this is fine I guess.

Both-sides is real, though. Generally members of government are self-interested, and if you disagree with that, you're a fool. The differences are small but occasionally important.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#473

Post by mmooss »

herewulf wrote: post #402
scandox wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in fact the raising of a huge army is indeed one of the goals of the protagonists. Of course for them the goal is to defeat evil. I'm sure that the people behind Palantir, Anduril and other such companies also believe they are building a military capability that will allow the United States to defeat what they see as evil. Every centre right libertarian I've encountered also has a "great distrust of power". All…

This is an excellent interpretation but I would put forth that it is also possible that these people simply want to use "cool names" and get on with their business without any kind of deep understanding of the literature.

Definitely a possibility, though see

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901389

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#474

Post by smt88 »

mellosouls wrote: post #303
Y-bar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies? Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.

Nerd culture. Def not maga, more silicon valley and tech startup types.

It's been exclusively used by right-wing people, mostly those close to Peter Thiel

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#475

Post by mcphage »

chiph wrote: post #41

> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to…

> the decline of US manufacturing is a related but separate topic

I was under the impression that US manufacturing output is at an all-time high—is that not the case?

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#476

Post by smt88 »

scandox wrote: post #277
mmooss wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people. One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against wh…

I don't know what Tolkien's personal philosophy was but I think a reasonable reading of LOTR would put it at centre right. The culture it valorizes has military capability and heroism at its core.

His personal philosophy was deeply anti-industrial. He felt as though industrialization was destroying everything good and pure and green in the world. That's why the orcs burn forests to produce their assembly lines.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#477

Post by mmooss »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #377
mmooss wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people. One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against wh…

> One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against white people, diversity becomes affirmative action for conservatives, banning and mocking and even embracing discussions of Nazis, etc. Heresy is at truth taken too far…

Very interesting!

> however tricky those are to separate in zero sum environments.

Framing the issue as zero sum environments is the key to defeating DEI, etc. Arguments are won (and lost) in the way they are framed.

Economics, for example, is not at all zero sum. But people work to frame it that way in order to divide and conquer.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#478

Post by mmooss »

philwelch wrote: post #412
mmooss wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people. One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against wh…

Tolkien was right-wing even in his own time, for instance he was a supporter of Franco.

Interesting. Right-wing meant something different then. Churchill was right wing, but has nothing to do with current white christian 'masculinist' nationalists.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#479

Post by mmooss »

potato3732842 wrote: post #347
mmooss wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide any evidence? What I'm stating are public facts. We can always come up with reasons , but we need evidence of what actually happened.

You'll never find evidince hard enough to fashion the sort of club people who ask such questions ought to be bludgeoned with. Do you really think anyone would be so stupid as to leave hard evidince? That's the magic of the whole process, they can do those things fully within the bounds of the process. They decide (or don't), often at the urging of lobbyists, or non-lobbyists parties who themselves typically aren't co…

So you have no evidence. I do, and I'm open to something besides conspiracy theories.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#480

Post by rpmisms »

lm28469 wrote: post #341
rpmisms wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Department of War is far more honest. The Gulf name doesn't mean anything, it's a joke and we all know it.

> it's a joke and we all know it. "grab them by the pussy" -> just a joke selling cans of beans from the oval office -> just a joke shilling a pillow company from the white house -> just a joke "let's march to the capitol" -> just a joke doge -> just a joke "give me the peace nobel price" -> just a joke "Ukraine started it" -> just a joke "6 gazillion percent tariff on china" -> just a joke I rug pulled my supporters…

Don't strawman me. I said the Gulf name is a joke.
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