8 ms·
Duty, Democracy and the Threat of Tribalism
- hudibras 7y agoIf he runs in the Republican primary, Trump is fucked.
- reallydontask 7y agoit seems unlikely that anybody will run against trump on the republican primary but we'll see
- Svip 7y agoTwo people already are: Bill Weld and Joe Walsh. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-hard-to-know-what-kind-of-damage-trumps-primary-challengers-can-do/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-hard-to-know-what-k...
- a3n 7y agoAnd the Republican National Committee has stated that they won't support anyone but Donald Trump.
- ceejayoz 7y agoSure, which would include Mattis.
- atlasunshrugged 7y agoBut fair enough that there don't seem to be too many serious contenders (as far as I'm aware, it seems some pundits are even just wondering if Joe Walsh is doing this simply as a play to get more attention/funds)
- ceejayoz 7y agoThe Atlantic has an article out about him today, including interviews where he's extremely reluctant to criticize the sitting Commander in Chief. Him entering the primaries wouldn't fit with that. > "The duty of silence. If you leave an administration, you owe some silence. When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country. They still have the responsibility of protecting this great big experiment of ours. I know the malevolence some people feel for this country, and we have to give the people who are protecting us some time to carry out their duties without me adding my criticism to the cacophony that is right now so poisonous." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/james-mattis-trump/596665/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/james-m...
- hackerbabz 7y agoKind of like McClellan vs Lincoln. Wait no nothing like that.
- sleepysysadmin 7y agoIt has been well over a 100 years since the last time the president didn't get the nomination. It's pretty much going to be Trump vs Biden.
- atlasunshrugged 7y agoI'm more interested in who will run as VP on the Dem side, I'm still waiting for a Biden/Oprah ticket
- Ididntdothis 7y ago“It's pretty much going to be Trump vs Biden.” A 74 year old vs a 78 year old. Pretty appealing options.
- sleepysysadmin 7y ago74 year old white dude vs a 78 year old white dude. Why do you think it's pretty much just white old dude?
- dragonwriter 7y ago> It's pretty much going to be Trump vs Biden. Possible, but I doubt it. The early non-incumbent front-runner almost never wins the nomination, and while Biden has a big lead, it's far from a majority of the party and all of his opposition and most of the party electorate differ from him in the same direction (e.g., Democrats prefer Medicare for All over keeping Obamacare by a 2:1 margin.) As the set of candidates narrows (and it will considerably before the first primary votes are cast), that doesn't work in Biden’s favor.
- veidr 7y agoIn the Republican party of some people's wistful imagination, perhaps, but not in the actual one. Trump is broadly unpopular with the American people as a whole, and every common demographic subset of them other "white males without a college degree". But among Republican party members? His claims of "94%" are bullshit, naturally, but the actual results of real mainstream polling[1] put it north of 80%. To paraphrase Marlo Stanfield: A lot of people want America to be one way. But it's the other way. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-claims-higher-job-approval-among-republicans-than-recent-polls-have-found/2019/08/23/0e6c68c8-c599-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-claims-higher-...
- coupdetaco 7y agoDrumpf is finished
- dang 7y agoWould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've done it a lot and we ban accounts that do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- coupdetaco 7y agoHN is turning into reddit
- dang 7y agoWould you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html all the way to the end? and please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
- dhyft 7y agole cheeto man rest in pieces
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mothsonasloth 7y agoIt's not directly related to General Mattis, but I would recommend reading Evan Wright's book "Generation Kill". Which recounts his time being embedded with the 1st Recon Battalion, which was under the command of Mattis (Callsign Chaos) during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The book even goes briefly into a famous moment in the invasion of Iraq were General Mattis fires one of his commanders during a siege of a city. https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/that-time-mattis-fired-a-commander-in-the-middle-of-combat https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/that-time-mattis-fir... HBO did a miniseries on the book too which is great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Kill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Kill
- TheGallopedHigh 7y agoI would like to second the tv series Generation Kill. Brilliant show. Really highlights a lot of the ridiculousness of war. Not as serious nor on the same scale as Band of Brothers, but still good nonetheless.
- mabbo 7y agoAmazing fact about that book and show: Sergeant Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes ('Fruity' Rudy) finished his term with the military and decided to move to Hollywood and become an actor. A few years later, casting began for the miniseries based on the book, based on his tour. He tried out. Rudy is played by himself.
- lyfy 7y agoIf you enjoyed reading Wright's book, you may also enjoy Cpt. Nathaniel Fick's One Bullet Away. He led Second Platoon's Bravo Company.
- marktangotango 7y agoAs others have said, this is an excerpt promoting a forthcoming book, not a declaration to run against the current president. Also interesting to note Mattis is call sign "Chaos" who was a major offscreen character and frequently mentioned on the HBO mini series "Generation Kill".
- CPLX 7y agoWhile I genuinely believe there may be an interesting perspective here, reviewing it should be done after establishing proper context. Which, in this case, is that the person speaking has so far mostly chosen to spend their life lethally inflicting American hegemony on populations around the world via mechanized warfare. Not to diminish their service on the board of Theranos and General Dynamics of course.
- buttcoinslol 7y agoA military officer participating in warfare?! How uncouth. Were you just looking to get in a dig about US hegemony? I prefer it to Chinese hegemony, and so should you.
- CPLX 7y agoPerhaps you’re able to detect the potential issues with a denunciation of tribalism made by someone who had a leading role in the homicide of several hundred thousand Iraqis for no apparent reason beyond their regional, ethnic, and religious affiliations.
- dondawest 7y agoNo apparent reason? What about the “rape rooms”?
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- padobson 7y agoThis was thoughtful, measured, wise, well-written, and completely ineffectual. There's no "threat of tribalism". We're living in tribalism. This piece could only be effective in another climate. Ham-fisted, on-the-nose, bluntness is the only way to get your message across to a political audience in 2019.
- luckylion 7y ago> There's no "threat of tribalism". We're living in tribalism. I understand the point to be "tribalism is great, but we should be one tribe dominating all (or most, with our allies, as long as they are aligned with us) the other tribes". I didn't see any general call against tribalism. "Defending our way of life" is pretty much that: "the tribe's way of life".
- scottlocklin 7y ago> I didn't see any general call against tribalism. "We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions." The phrase "defending our way of life" isn't in the article.
- dondawest 7y ago>"We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions." This describes the entirety of human history. And CERTAINLY the history of America.
- luckylion 7y ago> "We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions." exactly: I read We to mean "US-citizens", not "humans". Divide and conquer, be divided and you might be conquered, therefore (internal) division is bad. As soon as some intergalactic threat shows up, the same rhetoric will be heard on a planetary level. "This is no time for internal division while the bugs are trying to wipe us out. You've seen what they did to Buenos Aires." > The phrase "defending our way of life" isn't in the article. From the article: "When it comes to the defense of our experiment in democracy and our way of life, ideology should have nothing to do with it."
- frankbreetz 7y agoFrom the article: "Nations with allies thrive, and those without them wither. Alone, America cannot protect our people and our economy. At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering. A polemicist’s role is not sufficient for a leader." This is a true statement, I just hope the damage done can be undone. We are stronger together than we are alone.
- rayiner 7y agoIs that empirically true? The USA was the largest economy in the world by 1890, despite pursing a policy of isolationism for the entire century before that. By the time we entered the First World War, we accounted for a quarter of the world economy, about as much as all of Western Europe put together.
- dariusj18 7y agoI'd be interested in seeing this data. I couldn't find anything with a cursory search, can you point me in the right direction?
- rayiner 7y agohttps://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history...
- dariusj18 7y agoSo the source for that appears to be http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm "Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2008 AD" but I can't find the methodology used. It is definitely an interesting spreadsheet to look through.
- xyzzyz 7y agoMaddison is garbage source for anything pre 1800s, FWIW. His all "data" before 1800s is completely made up. See http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Book_Reviews/Maddison.pdf http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Book_Reviews/...
- DanielBMarkham 7y agoThis was a good essay: well-written, cogent, and thought-provoking. I know there are a lot of folks that want to take this essay and bash it into some political points. I think that's probably part of the problem Mattis is describing; our desire to make social media hay out of whatever we're given. He does have a point about current politics in there. It's hidden quite a bit. His larger point, though, is about how instant communication is changing the nature of how governments work. Presumably that's what he gets paid for: understanding and projecting current trends through a historical lens. I don't know what the solution is. A big part of the problem is that nobody much wants to talk about the generic situation. There's no clicks in it. Instead it's pitching rhetorical softballs to people who are already on your side. Congrats to Mattis for being able to walk through this mess and still come out looking okay. He's doing better than most.
- flixic 7y ago> I don't know what the solution is. Neither do I but I see tribalism as one of the most destructive forces of the last decade, responsible for almost all big changes (and lack of change) in the world. Politics spill out to other areas. It is not difficult to connect the dots between rapid clicks-and-likes driven social media to the burning of Amazon forests. I don't know what the solution is but this is the meta problem. Solving it is likely to start fixing other areas of life.
- DanielBMarkham 7y agoPerhaps what we're finding out is that humans have had all sorts of natural obstacles to communication: geography, the ability of sound to travel, and so forth. As time progressed, trade and travel have presented unique challenges. When I meet a strange person, they might not be friend or foe but something in-between. We can still converse and exchange, but I don't trust you. Not like my people. We've socially evolved as tribal creatures, but odd ones. We're tribal creatures with the ability to freely mingle between various tribes (for the most part). This actually gives us tremendous evolutionary advantages. We evolve first as individuals, then as small groups, then as groups-of-groups, and so on. At any one time there could be millions of various adaptations in the works. As conditions change, various individuals and group succeed and others fall by the wayside. This person-family-clan-tribe-region evolutionary promotion model works for biology, science, social mores, and so forth. What we tech folks have done, and we had no way of knowing, is flatten all of that out. So now what we see is winner-take-all for all of those things that used to be widely diverse and somewhat chaotic. It would seem to folks who didn't know better that this would be a good thing. After all, isn't standardization good? But in fact it's turning what used to extremely robust and anti-fragile systems into quite brittle and unpredictable ones. I don't think most people understand the problem, even the ones who complain about it. That doesn't make me optimistic that there's a solution forthcoming.
- gnusty_gnurc 7y agoGeneral Mattis and others like him from the administrative, technocratic state have to do so much more to try to convince us that they're qualified. His appeals to decency and fitness of leadership ring supremely hollow after 20 years in the Middle East absolutely screwing up at every turn. We're in the current mess, largely defined by lack of trust in government, precisely because of "respectable" heads of state like Mattis.
- creaghpatr 7y agoNot to mention spending years on Theranos' board, I guess he gets a free pass for letting Elizabeth Holmes play him like a fiddle. https://www.axios.com/mattis-theranos-1521137535-f08d8b9b-78f7-4e31-b2b5-4fade3d52a91.html https://www.axios.com/mattis-theranos-1521137535-f08d8b9b-78...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amoorthy 7y agoAmerican foreign policy has been inconsistent and often deadly to many civilians worldwide. Americans sometimes go in with the best of intentions, but not always, as we know from the Iraq war, CIA overthrow of Iranian government, and many other debacles. For Mathis to disregard this and put the military and intelligence apparatus above politics is disingenuous, or at least ignorant of reality. He may be non-partisan but his department has a hand in why our current tribalism exists, and always has. If American military and intelligence organizations had a truly non-interventionist approach and one which works with our allies then there are politicians on both sides to support them - Tulsi Gabbard, Ron Paul, for example. Finally, Mathis admits our defense spending exceeds all but 20 countries' GDP. In an era where our enemies are often digital, or terrorist organizations, more so than nation states, is our military spending oversized for what we need? Would any secretary of defense admit to this and redirect funds to more pressing causes at home or abroad? Such a leader would be a truly remarkable and laudable.
- jacobush 7y ago"In an era where our enemies are often digital, or terrorist organizations, more so than nation states, is our military spending oversized for what we need?" Hawks will only hear, "we need to spend more of the military budget on cyber threats".
- dagw 7y agoMore likely "We need a larger budget so we can spent more on cyber threats"