BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

but it's the fear of that destruction and of lawlessness that drives the average chinese into acceptance of confucianism, which is literally a legalist and rules-based system of obedience to promote the health and harmony of the whole. they are making that trade-off already. it is deeply ingrained in their cultural assumptions and worldview. it is working for them. i think most chinese would rather see the CCP pivot to a different form of politics than to jettison it and attempt something else.

you talk about an experience of extremes - the 20th century was that for china! of the biggest extremes anywhere on the planet! so of course the fate of 3% of the population is going to be a trivial matter to a chinese person. the state they have now is delivering growth and affluence, year on year. you talk about tibetan monks burning themselves in public, and how that would be a disaster in a square in brussels; but did belgium undergo a cultural revolution within living memory that killed 15-40 million people?!/ ffs

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 11:58:35)

there are poles who are pro-communist by the way, just as there are polish fascists. again it's another historical context and dimension that is doing nothing really to clarify the issue.

i did not know that. but remember it's wrong to call it religious or sectarian violence. it is just violence.

you lose all rights to accuse me of academicism when you insist on calling all wars 'just war' or all violence 'just violence', and attributable to some other 'complex social and economic factors'. sometimes people really do shoot someone else in the face because they hate their goddamn religion or ethnicity. it's a bit over-ripe to conclude that it was because they are from a disadvantaged part of society ... a history of discrimination ... lack of access to the labour force ... a history of family psychopathology ...

you are literally the guy going to northern ireland and telling the protestants and catholics that, actually, they're *checks notes* not fighting over religion. if only they would read marx, and understand the history of the issue in northern ireland being a consequence of colonialism's extractive regime, and the geography of belfast being divided between industrial areas and bourgeois ... you lose all right to parody academics for being divorced from the world. 'explaining' to people the 'real' reasons for their enmities. smh.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 12:52:11)

i like poking fun at you for your ties to the low countries. you seem to like emphasising your german roots. it seems like an obvious pain point for you.

and, yes, i do agree, but again it's a matter of proportion. to say the yugoslav wars were not ethnic conflicts because you have an academic theory is a little bit of a head scratcher. if all the actors in a war say they are murdering one another on ethnic grounds, saying they fucking hate people from x ethnic group, then it seems a little bit counter-intuitive to insist that ethnicity is only a 'side-effect', and really they're arguing over resources. but whatever. i actually don't care enough to belabour this point. you can have your cute theories that get you high marks on IR papers.

i picked resources at random, swap it out for any other 'causal factor' you like. there's something very academic in explaining to people who are at one another's throats because of age-old ethnic hatred that, really, it's because of another dynamic that none of them are privy to. and in starting from that unlikely proposition and arguing it, you're basically writing a term paper.

i am saying the 'ancient hatreds' propaganda was used by croatia and serbia, and was effective. that's my not my line. that's what mobilized their own people. i said it in my very first post. they were incited to that action by such rhetoric. are we even having the same conversation here? christ what a waste of time.

it's literally what academics do, yes, after the fact to then analyse it and say 'actually, it was about xyz'. ditto starting with an 'unlikely proposition' and debunking the main narrative. it's so funny to me that you were making jokes about 'pedantic scholars' starting their papers with 2 pages of definitions, and then you don't recognise a basic rhetorical structure of basically every essay ever.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 13:30:11)

you waded in to a post between me and jay and unfurled your pet theory about how rwanda, the balkans, etc. were not ethnic conflicts.

lol the entire world calls them ethnic conflicts. that's because different ethnic groups killed one another for (their own believed) ethnic reasons. nobody is saying in that description that the wars 'started' because of ethnicity, pure and simple. obviously there is a context and a breakdown of civil order. why does that even need to be said?

of course an academic can say 'actually it was about xyz', but that analysis has to at least account for the subject position/ideology of the people involved, and their potential for bad faith, and to act on wrong information/a bad judgment/for dishonest reasons/etc. just jumping onto my description of the conflict as 'ethnic' and saying HAH! wrong! is counter-intuitive to all hell. ok, so the balkans were actually about something else. just the example you picked will be news to most of the nationalists involved.

this whole day you've just done nothing but expose how your own understanding of basically anything is hugely restricted to your own discipline of study. first attempting a lecture on episteme when you haven't the foggiest. now claiming absolutely that the balkans (and rwanda) were conclusively once and for all not ethnic in nature. but they were ethnic in nature. some thought-provoking books and studies do not erase the fact that people of different ethnicities killed one another for no greater reason, often times, than they were a different ethnicity. do you not see the sophistry involved in what you're saying? i don't even disagree with you that sociological or materialist analysis or whatever adds nuance, deepens understanding, gives new perspectives. but people still did kill one another over perceived ethnic rivalries. that's just what happened. christ alive.

i like that you've affected my air and way of posting. i take it as a high compliment.

also i have commissioned and edited books on the balkan conflict. i did a 500-something page book of interviews and testimonials, edited by an english guy who spent the period in the region. a lot of it was basically folky poetry and songs, which he translated too. hence how i knew about the serb song above. lmao. ‘stick to publishing’. i was a HISTORY publisher.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-20 14:04:49)

Don't let him cuck you, Larssen. You keep doing you. You got my support.

Saw an interview with Biden this morning. He looked befuddled. #Trump2020

They really couldn't pick anyone normal? Why did it come down to this doofus and Sanders? All they had to do was pick someone less bad than Trump and it was in the bag.

i am firmly of the view that battling a deranged populist-right candidate like trump can best be done by picking someone from the left of centre like sanders. biden is more reheated rice pudding. it didn't work with hillary and i'm not sure why they want to re-run the same close-run thing again.

I am not convinced Sanders would have been able to generate the enthusiasm he promised to win the general. He couldn't even do it to win two primaries.

I don't think the current brand of center left American politics is capable of winning nationally. It is too cucked. Too much focus on LGBT rights, women issues, and racial politics. You can go back to my old post near the start of this thread when I suggested the Democrats dial it back and nominate old white men again. I was proven right regarding how nominating a woman would go.