7 ms·

I think a lot of countries do have clarity. The USA definitely does not. I'm starting to wonder if "not knowing what we want" will be the root cause for the en

I think a lot of countries do have clarity. The USA definitely does not. I'm starting to wonder if "not knowing what we want" will be the root cause for the end of American hegemony. We entered 2 wars without clarity on what it would mean to win. This was the #1 post-mortem on Iraq and Afghanistan from basically every general involved over 15 years: they never had mission clarity. On the back of that tough lesson, we immediately entered a trade war with zero clarity on what it would mean to win. And before we could learn the lesson a third time we're now up against a pandemic and apparently can't decide what it means for us to win. I'm starting to wonder if "not knowing what you want" is even worse than wanting something dumb.

aspenmayer 6y ago
If you don’t know what you want, you can’t be disappointed you didn’t get it. If you don’t know what you’ll get, you won’t be beholden to citizens for not getting it or getting it done. It may seem careless, but it’s also convenient to avoid accountability by avoiding responsibility, and avoiding responsibility by avoiding acknowledgement or awareness of an issue.
- convolvatron 6y ago
  this seems true. but it kind of implies that there is a _secret_ agenda. it would kinda be more comforting if there was, but its not really clear.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    I didn’t mean to imply such an agenda exists in America. Sovereign democracy in Russia is one example of what such a secret (or even explicitly public) agenda would look like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://www.economist.com/europe/2013/05/11/an-ideologues-exit https://www.economist.com/europe/2013/05/11/an-ideologues-ex...
ErikAugust 6y ago
There was a clear objective in Iraq and Afghanistan - justify (and grow) an already humongous defense budget. It worked.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  That answer seems... too easy. I think our problem is much deeper than that.
vikramkr 6y ago
at least with a pandemic there is a clear end goal of "no more pandemic," and we're not entirely reliant on the government to get us there. even if the journey ends up being way way way way way more painful than it should have been, with far too many lives lost, we do have a path to eradicating the disease through widespread vaccination etc and people in the private/academic sectors can push on making progress there. With the war and the trade war though, those are quagmires the government got us into (with the citizens vocal support for the wars), and it really mattered that there that our leadership didn't know what it wanted to achieve. At least we have a long term goal in fighting covid, even if our leadership doesn't know what short term success should look like...
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  The long-term goal in Iraq/Afghanistan was "peaceful muslim-majority western-values democracies in the middle east". In other words, a literal pipe dream. The long-term goal of the trade war with China is... QoL that costs low six figure salaries plus a pension and union protection for every high school grad in the midwest willing to work in a factory, even as the rest of the world surpasses us in labor productivty. In other words, a literal pipe dream. We always have some pipe dream. We just never have an actual sober-minded mission with realistic expectations. Maybe America needs a war on the drug of American exceptionalism. idk. I know war is always the answer, though. :-\ If we weren't drunk on exceptionalism, we would be containing the virus and we would have a Manhattan project-level investment in vaccine research. We don't. Calling a spade a spade literally sounds like trolling these days.
  - bitbckt 6y ago
    > Calling a spade a spade literally sounds like trolling these days. Maybe not the best way to phrase that these days.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      TIL: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763... Until the 20th century phrase had exclusively the meaning I always thought it had, and that meaning dates back to the 1500s (spade = gardening tool). In the 1920s some people started using "spade" to mean "person with dark-toned skin" (because spades are black in a deck of cards, so spade the gardnening tool => spade the suit in a deck of cards => poc). I've never heard "spade" used like that before, and the article suggests that use of "spade" remains fairly esoteric, but it's apparently in wide enough use that dictionaries have picked up on this meaning. The article doesn't ever establish that the phrase itself is used as a double entendre. In a quick saerch, I can't find any in-the-wild uses of "Call a spade a spade" that evoke the double meaning. TBH I think the article's advice is sound but also extremely jaded ("Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together"). I'll stop using the phrase, but doing so feels like assuming the worst of my interlocutors' intelligence and intent.

aspenmayer 6y ago

If you don’t know what you want, you can’t be disappointed you didn’t get it. If you don’t know what you’ll get, you won’t be beholden to citizens for not getting it or getting it done. It may seem careless, but it’s also convenient to avoid accountability by avoiding responsibility, and avoiding responsibility by avoiding acknowledgement or awareness of an issue.

convolvatron 6y ago
this seems true. but it kind of implies that there is a _secret_ agenda. it would kinda be more comforting if there was, but its not really clear.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  I didn’t mean to imply such an agenda exists in America. Sovereign democracy in Russia is one example of what such a secret (or even explicitly public) agenda would look like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://www.economist.com/europe/2013/05/11/an-ideologues-exit https://www.economist.com/europe/2013/05/11/an-ideologues-ex...

ErikAugust 6y ago

There was a clear objective in Iraq and Afghanistan - justify (and grow) an already humongous defense budget. It worked.

throwawaygh 6y ago
That answer seems... too easy. I think our problem is much deeper than that.

vikramkr 6y ago

at least with a pandemic there is a clear end goal of "no more pandemic," and we're not entirely reliant on the government to get us there. even if the journey ends up being way way way way way more painful than it should have been, with far too many lives lost, we do have a path to eradicating the disease through widespread vaccination etc and people in the private/academic sectors can push on making progress there. With the war and the trade war though, those are quagmires the government got us into (with the citizens vocal support for the wars), and it really mattered that there that our leadership didn't know what it wanted to achieve. At least we have a long term goal in fighting covid, even if our leadership doesn't know what short term success should look like...

throwawaygh 6y ago
The long-term goal in Iraq/Afghanistan was "peaceful muslim-majority western-values democracies in the middle east". In other words, a literal pipe dream. The long-term goal of the trade war with China is... QoL that costs low six figure salaries plus a pension and union protection for every high school grad in the midwest willing to work in a factory, even as the rest of the world surpasses us in labor productivty. In other words, a literal pipe dream. We always have some pipe dream. We just never have an actual sober-minded mission with realistic expectations. Maybe America needs a war on the drug of American exceptionalism. idk. I know war is always the answer, though. :-\ If we weren't drunk on exceptionalism, we would be containing the virus and we would have a Manhattan project-level investment in vaccine research. We don't. Calling a spade a spade literally sounds like trolling these days.
- bitbckt 6y ago
  > Calling a spade a spade literally sounds like trolling these days. Maybe not the best way to phrase that these days.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    TIL: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763... Until the 20th century phrase had exclusively the meaning I always thought it had, and that meaning dates back to the 1500s (spade = gardening tool). In the 1920s some people started using "spade" to mean "person with dark-toned skin" (because spades are black in a deck of cards, so spade the gardnening tool => spade the suit in a deck of cards => poc). I've never heard "spade" used like that before, and the article suggests that use of "spade" remains fairly esoteric, but it's apparently in wide enough use that dictionaries have picked up on this meaning. The article doesn't ever establish that the phrase itself is used as a double entendre. In a quick saerch, I can't find any in-the-wild uses of "Call a spade a spade" that evoke the double meaning. TBH I think the article's advice is sound but also extremely jaded ("Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together"). I'll stop using the phrase, but doing so feels like assuming the worst of my interlocutors' intelligence and intent.