"Be the change yo want to see", I guess. So, my pet peeve theory is that "the rule of law" is not something the ruling class needs to cover their track; it's something the ruled class needs to cover their shame. Shame of being ruled, but also terror of being ultimately subjected to arbitrary power.
For instance, I believe that in the feodal past lay people used to genuinely believe that kings got their authority from God; not because kings were good observants of the precepts of religion (they were not), but because that protects the self-esteem and helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes.
I find it surprisingly hard to try to convince myself that there is no such thing as "rule of law", that for instance the overthrown of a non-aligned regime could be just about the oil and competition with China, although I know that's how future historians will deal with that non-story; There is some surprising amount of resistance from within to this idea. It's interresting to do the experiment.
Part of Schachnovelle as I remember it is that Dr. B as Weltbürger is driven crazy by the dual facts that Czentovic is both a primitive brute and yet succeeds at chess via brute force, which perhaps is meant to be compared with his earlier imprisonment in 1938, by people who succeeded at politics not by subtlety but by brute force.
The idea that cosmopolitan, educated, and cultivated people could be left like deer in the headlights by brutes setting themselves through by force reminded me of your description of TMT, or at least the ego-protective "helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes" part of your explanation.
Note also that Thucydides' Athenians say that if they were to speak to the many, they would not put the matter so baldly, but since they are speaking to the few, they feel they may be frank.
I'm sceptical of directly "transpiling" lessons from history-- & in general I find that Austrians are full of it* (sorry! It does feel like they are on the elitist end of the populist-elitist divide)
*Earnings
Ps:
>Be the change yo want to see
It's Gandhi's saying that needs (more) elab :) I'll be that hypocrite and leave you to it
This is wonderful! Not only does Gandhiji speak on multiple levels, but unlike many who attempt it he carries the conceit through to perfection, offering valid first-aid advice to complete the surface reading.
https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/cwmg_volume_thumbview/M...
(if one were only to read the first and last few pages, one would miss completely the change of tone in the middle; did EAB pick up this habit from the subcontinent?)
Heh. I just noticed DJT literally used the words "extraordinary military operation" during his press conference; does VVP's «специальной» have vastly different connotations in ru from "extraordinary" in en?
Unlikely to be intentional plagiarism, maybe just parallel evolution?
History repeats
But then again, it has to
Nobody listens
Guess I'd been reflecting on how close CBO and EMO (if I'm doing justice to the ru meaning?) sound to me. But I was already complaining at the formation of the DHS that it sounded remarkably parallel to an infamous organisation:
Department Ministerium
of für
Homeland Staats-
Security sicherheit
so I'm probably just a whiner and malingerer.
There's always the general lesson; even if Hillel[0] didn't get nailed to a stick[1] for preaching it, he doesn't seem to have many followers in, say, Likud.
A more specific lesson for the Old Country would be The Frogs Who Desired a King?
I've lifted^Wliberated this from somewhere, but can't remember where atm: the trouble with revolutions is that when they succeed[2], you rapidly discover that you didn't need a better government, you needed better people.
One reason I haven't finished the Durants' The Story of Civilization yet is that if you binge it, you rapidly discover that despite the pleasant turns of phrase, it's largely 13'549 pages of people treating each other poorly.
Pedantry to (nothing but): ERII could at least take a Landy offroad[3], even if in practice, as a lady, she often left it up to her chauffeur.
[1] I do love the characterisation in Master & Margherita which makes it sound like Mr. INRI was maybe on the spectrum (come to think of it, M&M is another frame story, but with the fantastic and realistic elements reversed)
[2] as the US 1776'ers, the Girondins, and the Mensheviks (to take just 3) might know?
[3] making her more accomplished than the modal Chelsea Tractor driver?
[2] Algolia-fu on yourself ;) do the inner party of SV or Fed have better people? It's possible that each of our "three hegemons" lose sleep over that question
The law of large numbers suggests that all of the hegemons:
bellatores military ML
laboratores economic IEF
oratores political DI
should optimise their practices and procedures for the population mean[0]: although one of them will obviously have slightly better people at any given point, which one is subject to time and chance, and the odds that that advantage would be larger get exponentially smaller.
(then again, the boundaries are more porous[1] than in the feudal days; I know of at least two MGIMO alums moonlighting in the economic realm)
[0] we've already covered 孫中山's triad, right?
[1] or are they? I think a typical "retirement plan" for an aging but rich bellator was to endow[2] a monastery with a comfortable amount of land, and then take orders there, because who would bump off an orator[3]? In the modern world, I see RAK (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/29/world/29FACEBOOK-...) has grown a long beard since I last saw him; is he in the process of transitioning from bellator to orator? Maybe not: he seems to be feeling acutely unwell.
[2] compare El Cid's provision for his wife and daughters; or even Goldmund's father "gifting" Blaze the pony
[3] compare "Hideyori's son, Kunimatsu (age 8) was captured and beheaded; his daughter Naahime (Princess Naa) (age 7) was sent to Tōkei-ji, a convent in Kamakura, where she later became the twentieth abbess Tenshūin (1608–1645)."
Ok, yes I think it helped me to understand what you had in mind.
I'm not interrested in the mind of violent sociopaths as much as I'm interrested in that of the decent people who have to accept to live under their rule, not only because of the numbers involved. Rulers might be a bit shy about their motives at times (although I can apreciate a candid one), but living under one's reign is one of our strongest taboo - thus my interest.
On the gripping hand, there might be the possibility of ignoring wanna-be authoritarian leaders but convincing people not to follow them, à la https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786278
Maybe there are more possibilities of which I am unaware; of these three, I chose the first.
Both those who voted for Trump or abstained from Harris believed they were acting _against_ authoritarians.
(BB was kinda fiction-in-a-fiction and would have provided no clue either for Harris and against Trump-- and 1984 (/Schachnovelle) didn't give a clue on how you might recognise an inner party-goer if you ran into one? Maybe Animal Farm would be better?)
Maybe it looks to you as if those who voted for Trump believed they were acting _against_ authoritarians, but I've lived among them.
I was still living in their midst when they tarred and feathered the Dixie Chicks (as they were then) for having the audacity to say GWB's Iraq Adventure might not be the most wonderful thing since sliced mayonnaise. (could we say they "cancelled" the Chicks?)
But now they're cheering Operation Southern Spear as if it were a homecoming game, as they did for GHB's Iraq. My local paper even had https://x.com/KatieMiller/status/2007541679293944266 (sorry for the X link) in it this morning.
They may say they're voting on a mind-your-own-business-principle, but whenever you look at what they do, they've consistently been voting on a leader-principle.
</anger>
Q. How do you describe a principled authoritarian follower?
A. "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind"
Inner Party Pigs
Outer Party Dogs
Proles the Equal animals
you are talking about the base that Trump knows he can always count on. they don't matter as much these days. (I completely forgot about them no airquotes) I'm not sure David Graeber ever publicly got angry at these guys, however*
Ask PH (or Algolia it) about who he is angry with on the left. Those who drove the Swing voters (the prole equivalent of interchangeables) over to the other side or got Biden to "abdicate" . Loosely reminds me of the turncoats at Sekigahara and Bosworth Field
(*The rival camps that the Trump "inner corporatists" take seriously are SV "inner-outer party" (Shu Han?) and WallStreet/Fed (Wu?). With their bands of incorrigible rationalists/technocrats.
Imho Trump _wants_ leftist intellectuals distracted from his true strategy, and this is why he's more careful with Mamdani-- enemy of my enemy yada yada)
One of the ways to learn a smattering of a language would be to look at YouTube comments; sentences of the form "in YYYY they still made real music" and "is anyone watching in YYYY?" seem to occur in every natural language.
(for Sekigahara I wonder if part of the issue was credibility: if Tokugawa promises so many koku, you can be pretty sure you're getting them [and in the event he even lasted into his 70s] but if Ishida promises you so many koku, well, a lot can happen in 7-8 years: what are the chances that young Toyotomi will honour Ishida's old deals?)
Edit: come to think of it, both Shu and Wu do spend many of their waking hours trying to figure out how to intermediate themselves into any possible otherwise-dyadic transaction... Wei supposedly does as well, but compared with Shu and Wu, at least here, Wei has a light touch.
True, but you were talking about voting Trump/Harris, which pretty much implies the wide electorate, no matter who the real selectorate may be.
(speaking of selection, I completely forgot to include the judiciary in previous models. Would the whole Civil Rights thing have even happened if it hadn't been for the Warren Court?)
[Not that Warren was an angel, but despite his bigotry in other ways —or maybe because of it?— he was able to win state office by just winning both party's primaries, which I hadn't even known was a thing]
There's a wonderful line in one of the Retief stories where The Corps Diplomatique Terrestrien attempts to introduce "one sentient one vote" on some planet out in the galactic boondocks, and the natives instantly grasp its corollary: one less sentient, one less vote...
I'd believe the low of SV to be such a force; the high appear to be heading for https://www.angryflower.com/348.html , and I've been away for over half a lifetime, so I don't know what the mid may be doing. Blowing in the wind, probably?
How you might recognise an inner party-goer? In the case of the US, I think long-tenured legislators were part of it during my tour, but in DJT's time I'd guess they, alongside silicon valley owners of various social graphs, are to be found among the interchangeables*.
Certainly casual Trump-watching is even less useful than the old days of Kremlin-watching; his inner circle changes so often (cue Bueno de Mesquita & Smith) that it's a good thing we have the web now — the airbrush artists probably would've organised and gone on strike if they'd had to keep up.
(I guess I should give DJT his due: I had thought the two party system was a structural problem, yet he's delivered an existence proof that it is indeed possible to do something about it)
* should someone send all 535 members of congress a copy of the snakebite article? It's not going to be me; that's their problem.
For instance, I believe that in the feodal past lay people used to genuinely believe that kings got their authority from God; not because kings were good observants of the precepts of religion (they were not), but because that protects the self-esteem and helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes.
I find it surprisingly hard to try to convince myself that there is no such thing as "rule of law", that for instance the overthrown of a non-aligned regime could be just about the oil and competition with China, although I know that's how future historians will deal with that non-story; There is some surprising amount of resistance from within to this idea. It's interresting to do the experiment.