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As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all

As I get older it becomes more obvious that the whole "moral arc of history" line is complete nonsense. Evil usually wins. Goodness is a strange outlier in all of history. It has to be fought for relentlessly, and is fleeting at best. The world as a whole now seems to be reverting to the mean.

camillomiller 15d ago
So, America good, China bad?
- ramesh31 15d ago
  >"So, America good, China bad?" No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
  - jackb4040 15d ago
    A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
    - rayiner 15d ago
      > In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire. This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
      - jackb4040 12d ago
        Lol I don't think I've ever been thanked for a post before. Don't thank me, join me and the handful of others here who don't just retroactively justify every decision our tech billionaire overlords make.
    - ramesh31 15d ago
      >but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. Yeah. Words matter. I do indeed wish we were back to a time where that was the case. America has always been flawed and contradictory, but our greatness came from a shared sense of some higher ideals that we strived for, regardless of the messy reality. That's been lost, and it's sad.
- boxed 15d ago
  America? It was the UK.
  - garou 15d ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
    - boxed 14d ago
      1967. Come now, this is not the subject at hand now.
throwaway2037 15d ago
What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? In the last thirty years, lots of countries have gotten more democratic.
- ramesh31 13d ago
  >What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? As bad as the Soviet Union was, what came next for Russia was far far worse. The Soviets at least had party rule; Russia is now an absolute autocracy ruled with an iron grip of one man who is now liquidating 30,000 people a month in a pointless war. Orders of magnitude more people have died in the last four years of Ukraine than in every direct Soviet military action combined post-WW2. Remember that Afghanistan was their most infamous blunder, leading directly to the dissolution, and only killed half of what they are losing monthly now.

camillomiller 15d ago

So, America good, China bad?

ramesh31 15d ago
>"So, America good, China bad?" No. Democracy good, autocracy bad. America is speed-running toward the latter at this point.
- jackb4040 15d ago
  A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.
  - rayiner 15d ago
    > In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire. This is one of the most insightful posts I've seen on this app. Thank you.
    - jackb4040 12d ago
      Lol I don't think I've ever been thanked for a post before. Don't thank me, join me and the handful of others here who don't just retroactively justify every decision our tech billionaire overlords make.
  - ramesh31 15d ago
    >but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it. Yeah. Words matter. I do indeed wish we were back to a time where that was the case. America has always been flawed and contradictory, but our greatness came from a shared sense of some higher ideals that we strived for, regardless of the messy reality. That's been lost, and it's sad.
boxed 15d ago
America? It was the UK.
- garou 15d ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
  - boxed 14d ago
    1967. Come now, this is not the subject at hand now.

throwaway2037 15d ago

What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? In the last thirty years, lots of countries have gotten more democratic.

ramesh31 13d ago
>What do you make of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain in Europe? As bad as the Soviet Union was, what came next for Russia was far far worse. The Soviets at least had party rule; Russia is now an absolute autocracy ruled with an iron grip of one man who is now liquidating 30,000 people a month in a pointless war. Orders of magnitude more people have died in the last four years of Ukraine than in every direct Soviet military action combined post-WW2. Remember that Afghanistan was their most infamous blunder, leading directly to the dissolution, and only killed half of what they are losing monthly now.