751–760 of 914 posts
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America is on a isolation downward spiral. Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd. See point one, America is alone now, it will take decades to repair the damage.
>Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd. They have been moving across Ukraine at a literal snails pace.
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"strong economic and strategic motive" behind Afghanistan? They did it to get Bin Laden basically. America are like a slightly corrupt and violent world police.
So they invaded Afghanistan to grab a Saudi national hanging out in Pakistan?
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The U.S. was already the richest country in the world per capita by 1880–even at the peak of the British Empire. Most of its military achievements during the war—building up the world’s largest Navy and airforce from almost nothing within a couple of years—was a product of the industrial economy that already existed before the war. America’s preference for common wisdom over book learning is a strength, not a weaknes…
America's post-war strength was built on unusually strong education. After the war, America had far more schooling overall than other countries. It was one of the many factors that made America a powerhouse in the 50s and 60s. Economic historians Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, who are essentially the gold standard reference here, show that the US became the richest nation precisely because it led the world in mass…
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> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unli…
> or that these departments have been taken over by people who explicitly use their influence within these departments to promote certain narratives What mechanisms do these department heads use to suppress conservative viewpoints in research? While politics in academia can be vicious, it's never a grand conspiracy like you think it is, it's typically, and depressingly petty issues and grudges.
DEI has likely had a minor influence. In the articles I linked above, the bias towards liberalism is weakest among Asians, then whites, and then strongest among blacks and Latinos. I don’t know what the racial composition of professors looks like, so this is just a hunch.
The primary mechanism would be to simply avoid hiring those who fail to signal that they are sufficiently liberal, and avoid funding research that would reach illiberal conclusions. I can’t point you to any evidence of this besides the paper I linked above, but which seems more likely:
1) Republican opinions just so obviously conflict with the study of communications that there are zero professors of communications who are registered Republicans.
2) Democrats took control of these positions and did not care to invite anyone who didn’t signal that they were ideological fellow travellers?
> While politics in academia can be vicious, it's never a grand conspiracy like you think it is, it's typically, and depressingly petty issues and grudges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...
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Of course there is. You can just hire them and train them. Most positions don't require college degrees. Everything you need to know for most jobs you learned in high school. At most you need a certificate program of some kind.
Construction, a few trades… Help me, I've run out of ideas without resorting to "Walmart Greeter". Most of those jobs went overseas a long time ago. Short of the couple I could think of, the rest of the jobs remaining that don't require some advanced education don't pay a "living wage". I'd love to see the US have a vocational "track" beginning in high school again. But that also requires we have the jobs for them wh…
I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.
- bookkeeper
- billing (esp. medical)
- data entry
- admin assistant
- inventory management
- basic tax filing
- content manager (for websites and social media)
- scheduling
- basic account management
- tons of stuff in supply chain
I could go on…
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> where public funding programs for research has begun to be funneled to startups instead of research groups. It is darkly amusing that in one post you claim "the left has not been popular since the 70s" whilst admitting that the EU is centrally planning new companies. That's very much the sort of thing the left did in the 1970s. > You cannot seriously suggest that the EU has moved left in any meaningful way ... the…
Centrally planning? My guy, the EU is not founding companies, it is giving existing companies subsidies. The profits of those companies will not be public, they are private. Nationalization and regularization are both on the decline. The opposite has happened: privatization of state monopolies and deregulatization. I also think it's hilarious that you think a) the EU is feminist, and b) that feminism is leftist. What…
Yes the bureaucrats have added a indirection level to shield themselves from consequences and fill the pockets of their friends. This is basically the definition of corrupt communism. Where political figure assign and distribute the work and rewards the commissars who oversee the work. Your head is so far up your ass that you don't even realise that you basically described the Chinese system, which is, guess what, freaking communist.
Feminism is absolutely leftist and is straight from the Marxist playbook. De Beauvoir and Sartre are the parents of modern feminism and are both heavily influenced by Marx. In the Soviet Union the propaganda for equality was extremely strong and women were just considered another regular worker, same as the men. In fact feminists played a key role in the revolution of 1917 and gained suffrage right away. Funnily enough, women complained that they were exploited, because unlike feminist in rich capitalist countries that can afford to give "freedom" to women in exchange for very little work/value, the soviet women were actually required to work, the country being too poor to afford them easy jobs. But you'll tell us how actually it's all liberalism and whatnot, for sure you have a special history we don't know about that contradict every common sources we know about. For sure.
Yes the EU is becoming more right-wing and conservative. This is course correction after decades of left/center-left (and greens) domination. But do you realise that this fact is completely contradictory to your point of view.
The argument is that the EU *was* pushing socialist policies and establishing a soft-form of communism. You contest that, claiming neoliberalism domination but then you admit that right-wing/conservative are just coming into power. I mean it was literally yesterday.
> For the first time, a right-wing majority is emerging at the European Parliament as the European People's Party flirts with groups that would have been considered too toxic to work with in the past. The pivot has given the EPP a choice but also created a headache for Ursula von der Leyen.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/11/15/how-the-epp-us...
A news that was published literally 15 days ago. It cannot be that both the EU was ruled by neoliberals and they are just coming into power at the same. Do you realised how disingenuous you are ? If not this is frightening.
> Your beliefs are not aligned with reality.
No clearly you have a delusional point of view. Even wikipedia that is famously tilting left is basically disagreeing with you on everything. Get a grasp.
> while austerity measures are hitting hard across the EU.
Of course that's coming. They have ran out of others people money and debt level are unsustainable. But I would also contest you personal anecdote with one of mine, since I know someone who is currently receiving subsidies for a musical concert via EU. So maybe you are just bad a selling your projects on top of having a distorted view of reality. To be honest that would make sense because even the hardest left-wingers are not stupid enough to believe the garbage they sell to the wider populace. They pretend in public but in private they'll tell you about whatever power trip they are currently chasing.
You seem to be getting high on your own supply; that can't be good.
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I don't agree on the Russia Ukraine motivations. Ukraine is not part of NATO and was not going to become part of NATO. There were already two NATO countries bordering Russia near Moscow and St P if NATO had wanted to invade which they had no thoughts of doing. Russia lies constantly on this stuff. I think they basically regarded Ukraine their land as part of the Russian empire they were restoring.
It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border. If Mexico agreed to this, it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded them under some whimsical pretext (drug gangs probably) and overthrew their government to prevent this. In fact this is, more or less…
The problem with pretending this analogy is relevant as a justification (or at least an "other people would have one the same thing" argument, which isn't really a justification to start with) of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (besides the fact that it relies on dubious assumptions about a counterfactual) is that the only reason Ukraine resumed its long-abandoned pursuit of relations with NATO was a direct result of the invasion by Russia in 2014.
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>The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon. That advantage was: being the only country that wasn't ravaged by war, and that profited for a while by trading with every faction. Some of countries were also severly kneecapped by US betrayal of promises, made by allies - to restore pre-war borders, and handover of them to USSR - that means less competition.…
> There are so many factors involved in that that attributing it to just investment in higher education and GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous post's attribution of the drop afterwards. Your comment sounds like you didn't quite understood the point I made. The whole point was that US benefited greatly from WW2 to reach the position of world's hegemon. But that happened nearly a century ago, and rea…
I will give full credit to the golden generation of Americans and the generation before that. They built America on true merit and efforts. However, maintaining the position was easy for the boomer and subsequent generations - break the Bretton-Woods agreement and shatter the gold standard after the USD obtained the throne of the world's reserve currency. This enabled the US to print infinite amounts of money and pile up unlimited debt and use the cash to sponsor any investment, any amount of social-security, buy anything and have the largest defense budget - so they can stomp anyone they want, heavily sponsor "regime change" - and still have relatively low inflation. The rest of the world just needs to grin and bear it.
As a non-American, I am really hoping for de-dollarization and fully independent payment networks completely separated from the West. The Russia-Ukraine war and Trump sanctions has gotten us around 10% of the way there. Only then shall one see the real effect of that $33 trillion debt.
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Thank you for repeating Russian propaganda. But the truth is that Ukraine is sovereign nation and has every right to decide their future and give a fuck about Russia feelings. Russia is the aggressor and blaming anything on NATO is laughable propaganda.
"... the truth is that Ukraine is sovereign nation and has every right to decide their future..." In all honesty, would you hold that argument if Mexico decides to host Russian or Chinese troops?
Ukraine wasn't hosting foreign troops (except Russian troops, some of whom were were the spearhead of the invasion) when the Russo-Ukrainian war started with the Russian invasion in 2014.
(They did start hosting some that were involved in training and advisory assignments after the war started and before the major escalation in 2022, but those can hardly justify the war which started with the 2014 invasion.)
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> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unli…
I'm not sure what evidence you would expect to see if it was self-selection because of an in-group mentality versus explicit hostility to intentionally keep some out. By comparison, is there some affirmative evidence for the reason why there are so few liberals in the FBI is because they self-selected out, instead of that the FBI being perceived as a conservative institution causes them to self-select out?
What about an explicit roadmap?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming
> is there some affirmative evidence for the reason why there are so few liberals in the FBI is because they self-selected out, instead of that the FBI being perceived as a conservative institution causes them to self-select out?
I’m not sure I understand your question. I would presume if people are self-selecting out of any organization it’s because they believe it isn’t a suitable place for them, and if this division is along party lines then politics is likely to be the cause of that belief. In either case, if the FBI skews conservative, I would guess that this was due to internal gatekeeping, not self-selection, and I think the history of the organization supports that assertion.