3 ms·

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 th

by rixed 9mo ago

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.

aebtebeten 9mo ago
> ...decent people who have to accept to live under their rule... On one hand, there's the option of voting with one's feet, which Zweig describes in "Die Welt von Gestern" (1942) On the other hand, another alternative is "inner emigration", eg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innere_Emigration https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innere_Emigration 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786278 Maybe there are more possibilities of which I am unaware; of these three, I chose the first.
- gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
  Maybe you've been outside for too long. 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?)
  - aebtebeten 9mo ago
    <anger> 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?) Then they claimed to be voting for DJT (a public figure whose bully bona fides go back at least 4 decades, eg https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6131533-trumpdeathpenaltyad05011989/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6131533-trumpdeathpe... ) on an "isolationist" platform. 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 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
    - gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
      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 https://www.hkml.net/Discuz/viewthread.php?tid=125577 https://www.hkml.net/Discuz/viewthread.php?tid=125577 (*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)
      - aebtebeten 9mo ago
        https://webcdn.guangming.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/i3.jpg https://webcdn.guangming.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/i... 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.
        aebtebeten 9mo ago
        more evidence in favor of PH's hypo: I'm bouncing off the 粤剧 :(
        9mo ago
  - aebtebeten 9mo ago
    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.
    - gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
      Yes!!

by rixed 9mo ago

aebtebeten 9mo ago

> ...decent people who have to accept to live under their rule... On one hand, there's the option of voting with one's feet, which Zweig describes in "Die Welt von Gestern" (1942) On the other hand, another alternative is "inner emigration", eg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innere_Emigration https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innere_Emigration 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786278 Maybe there are more possibilities of which I am unaware; of these three, I chose the first.

gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
Maybe you've been outside for too long. 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?)
- aebtebeten 9mo ago
  <anger> 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?) Then they claimed to be voting for DJT (a public figure whose bully bona fides go back at least 4 decades, eg https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6131533-trumpdeathpenaltyad05011989/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6131533-trumpdeathpe... ) on an "isolationist" platform. 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 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
  - gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
    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 https://www.hkml.net/Discuz/viewthread.php?tid=125577 https://www.hkml.net/Discuz/viewthread.php?tid=125577 (*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)
    - aebtebeten 9mo ago
      https://webcdn.guangming.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/i3.jpg https://webcdn.guangming.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/i... 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.
      - aebtebeten 9mo ago
        more evidence in favor of PH's hypo: I'm bouncing off the 粤剧 :(
        9mo ago
- aebtebeten 9mo ago
  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.
  - gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
    Yes!!