7 ms·

There's an amazing essay on this: https://archive.ph/D9YWr https://archive.ph/D9YWr It feels bad to us to have these ridiculous politicians who spend 95% of th

by anm89 4y ago

There's an amazing essay on this: https://archive.ph/D9YWr https://archive.ph/D9YWr It feels bad to us to have these ridiculous politicians who spend 95% of their time on theatrical in fighting as the US has for the last ~15 years but in terms of first order effects, it doesn't really matter. Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. But the problem is, no one actually believes that there is any need to do things like have a cohesive foreign policy or actually administer the government, people view the job of the politicians as to just repetitively engage in the kabuki theatre of dunking on the other team over over and again. Which was fine when the world was basically peaceful and we could just lord over everyone with our massive military and totally dominant currency which were built up in the previous era. The problem is that this system is going to fail spectacularly when there are actual complicated geo political issues to deal with and I think we are in the early stages of witnessing right now. Someone else made the observation that we are effectively trying to deal with this problem but cancelling Putin over twitter, because canceling people on twitter is one of the primary modes of governance in the US right now. That may sound hyperbolic but I think it's actually pretty accurate, a lot of the sanctions on Russia were companies self sanctioning after getting attacked on twitter. It turns out saying mean things on twitter is not particularly effective against tanks and artillery. Anyway, interesting times.

simonblack 4y ago
Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. To us people on the outside, listening to US people denigrating each other on the web, it seems to us that it's 50-50 whether the US will be involved in a Civil War or a big peer-to-peer International War first.
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  It's mostly a tiny number of loud and influential people drowning out the majority who either have a balanced view and wish someone would listen through all the shouting or can't make sense of any of it and shut down a long time ago so they could get on with their lives. The latter group is where you find most of the swing voters both parties try to woo every election but ignore otherwise.

by anm89 4y ago

simonblack 4y ago

Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. To us people on the outside, listening to US people denigrating each other on the web, it seems to us that it's 50-50 whether the US will be involved in a Civil War or a big peer-to-peer International War first.

mkr-hn 4y ago
It's mostly a tiny number of loud and influential people drowning out the majority who either have a balanced view and wish someone would listen through all the shouting or can't make sense of any of it and shut down a long time ago so they could get on with their lives. The latter group is where you find most of the swing voters both parties try to woo every election but ignore otherwise.