There is a major difference between conquering people and claiming the places they reside as part of empire versus drawing lines on a map and claiming to legally own the land itself.
When the Romans were conquering their empire in Europe, they weren't claiming land and claiming that those who resided on that land were now subject to the Roman Empire. This is however literally what Spain did during the Reconquista and what the conquistadors did in the Americas afterward. It's also how these thigs tend to go today.
The Romans, like the Aztecs, conquered groups of people and forced them to be subjects. The land they were on was less important than the people themselves being subjugated to the hegemon. If a subject city's population decided to abandon it and establish their city elsewhere within Rome's martial reach, the Romans would keep the people rather than the useless unoccupied land.
Feudal estates and fiefdoms are a kind of proto land ownership but even this was distinct to how we would consider it today. Claims were much more vague and impossible to enforce without the cartography tools we have now. Again, they were claiming ownership of the nation as a people, not a nation defined by borders and acreage.
Of course there was plenty of disagreement as to which hegemon runs which settlement. The disagreement was not that two governments had a legal claim to the same piece of defined land, but things like "God chose me to rule whatever I can reach, and I can reach you" or simply "I can beat you in war, so these people are mine."
People "owned" their homes and used whatever land around it to farm, but not as in they had a legal claim to the whole piece of property and a franchise to do with that landed property as they pleased. They owned it because they resided there and could keep up what they were using. Wealthier people had more people to manage more territory in their behalf, but even this was more about the subjects than the land they lived on, which was understood to be incidental compared to how we would see it today. Unoccupied, unused land miles away from where anyone lived was not being fought over. Wherever they lived domination of people was fought for.
Conflicts over land ownership didn't start until the Reconquista just before the modern era. Prior to that the idea that people privately could own land didn't exist. This idea was very helpful for colonization and it is not natural.
We're not talking about the use of violence generally, which is a nuanced and vastly complex topic. We are talking about literally wiping out 37% of humanity, which is much less nuanced or complex. Such ideas should have been left behind during the previous century.
What would the mechanism be to exterminate 37% of the human race with this degree of precision? Who would be in charge of it and why do we trust them not to continue using such a tool? If it's not a military operation, what would it be?
A major, fundamental issue with your suggestion is that it assumes there are multiple species of humans which exist who are fundamentally different on a genetic level. If I was a god who could snap my fingers and instantly obliterate all conservatives, it would not be the end of conservatism. You yourself are locked in violent thinking, are you absolutely certain that your own children couldn't possibly be attracted to violence when you yourself believe that mass violence on an unprecedented scale is the best opportunity to create a just world? Are you certain that no child born of any survivors would carry any temptation to take advantage of others as those in the past have? Are you sure no one in the surviving billions of people, generationally removed from your mass killing, would have the ability to re-invent a dipshit philosophy like fascism? I don't think its bad genes which causes the myriad evils which result from trauma and poverty. As long as there is an incentive for people to behave in anti-social ways, people will behave in anti-social ways.
You are correct that unreasonable people can't be reasoned with. Dogs also can't be reasoned with but are not a threat to society. This is because we manage them. Trump has demonstrated that you can be a fool-whisperer like Cesar Milan is a dog-whisperer. The problem is that he uses his ability to influence fools for evil instead of good. These unreasonable fear-motivated dupes can be dealt with in ways that take advantage of their cowardice to neutralize themselves as a threat or depend on pro-social groups rather than use their cowardice to fuel despotism. The human race of which you and I are part will contain a vast array of people acting and being acted upon. We as a species can be influenced, but eugenic movements to root out undesirables have never worked.
I have never heard an anarchist speak this way. I don't want to be left alone, I simply don't want a class of people who believe they hold authority over me as my superiors. Anarchists shouldn't be using anyone. A stable anarchy can't exist as long as people are still thinking in terms of using each other as resources for their own interests.
Murdering each other is against our nature but we've been doing it prolifically since the advent of agriculture so much so that war is seen as a "natural" part of life. The solution of killing all the bad guys so only good guys are left has probably been on the mind of most of those soldiers and military leader for the last 10,000 years. It turns out this approach doesn't end authoritarianism or violence.
If somehow we killed 37% of the human population in no way would that bring us closer to a fair and equitable world. It would be exactly in line with dominator culture hegemony which has existed for the most recent few thousand years. What you described would not be revolutionary, but typical for the present buccaneer philosophy which is popular among the powerful and their thralls.
Agreed. It evokes a whole story. Either the Paladin is so overcommitted to their work to such a degree that they are willing to go on dangerous adventures or the society is so legalistic it's the Paladin's duty to accompany their cases wherever they go without exceptions. Alternatively, maybe the Paladin wanted to be an adventurer anyway to escape their boring life as a parole officer and found just such a situation that they can fufill their desires and duties at the same time.
Too often this option is presented by people who are deliberately manipulating you and causing you to think that you only have the two choices which each benefit them and neither you. Always consider who is offering this choice and why. The true lesser evil here is whatever you have to do to get out of the situation where this choice is being presented to you.
Anti-social socialists are an absolutely fascinating internet phenomenon. I have met a handful in real life, but they're more tolerated for their merits than any kind of influential when it comes to face to face dialogue and praxis.
This appears to be stupid, and it is, but it's mostly evil. Teaching children to accept absurdities and distrust evidence to make them easier to control.
I think a lot of people are neglecting to think of Biden's lifetime record in public office. The United States is the nation on Earth with the greatest proportion of its own citizens imprisoned and we have Biden's 1994 crime bill in large part to thank for that. Unfortunately it wasn't terribly shocking when he went on to be more supportive of the Palestinian genocide than any other president in US history other than Trump.
I live around it. I know plenty of people who aren't all the way in the deep end but could eventually go all the way into the deep end. What really helps them not make that final leap is that there is an extremely well deserved stigma against Nazi ideology, the most notorious strain of fascism. There is a gradient and there are plenty of secondary believers whose minds are primed to support a strongman on the elimination of all the bad people keeping society down but would use nicer words to describe it, but tertiary believers who have just been immersed in a deluge of contradictory information can be reasoned with. On this instance at least there is not a lot of tolerance for appeals to popular prejudices which may work out in a general crowd where there isn't a sufficient challenge to it.
"We need to make room for misinformation on our platforms otherwise we won't have mass appeal. A lot of people love to scapegoat populations who can't effectively defend themselves, and leaving them out just because they're contributing to creeping fascism and and multiple ongoing genocides is just petty."
I will never participate in an instance which is federated with Meta or any other profit-driven instance. If profit is more important than responsibility and safety, then irresponsibility and danger can be the only consequence.
It's always important to take a step back and consider that the mega-rich exist in a totally separate reality than the rest of us do. They were raised in a way that they were never forced out of infancy into adulthood like the rest of us were. I hope that eventually we realize that it's not responsible to allow major institutions to be under the control of adults whose worldview has never progressed since the time they were toddlers.
It began on reddit as the general sub for the college dorm #196 at some university, one thing lead to another, and now it's a meme sub which exists everywhere.
The greatest enemy of any right wing chauvinist is a right wing chauvinist from a different culture.
Unless they continue to actively support US interests they are going to find out that US military generals are the same kind of people they are.
There is a major difference between conquering people and claiming the places they reside as part of empire versus drawing lines on a map and claiming to legally own the land itself.
When the Romans were conquering their empire in Europe, they weren't claiming land and claiming that those who resided on that land were now subject to the Roman Empire. This is however literally what Spain did during the Reconquista and what the conquistadors did in the Americas afterward. It's also how these thigs tend to go today.
The Romans, like the Aztecs, conquered groups of people and forced them to be subjects. The land they were on was less important than the people themselves being subjugated to the hegemon. If a subject city's population decided to abandon it and establish their city elsewhere within Rome's martial reach, the Romans would keep the people rather than the useless unoccupied land.
Feudal estates and fiefdoms are a kind of proto land ownership but even this was distinct to how we would consider it today. Claims were much more vague and impossible to enforce without the cartography tools we have now. Again, they were claiming ownership of the nation as a people, not a nation defined by borders and acreage.
Of course there was plenty of disagreement as to which hegemon runs which settlement. The disagreement was not that two governments had a legal claim to the same piece of defined land, but things like "God chose me to rule whatever I can reach, and I can reach you" or simply "I can beat you in war, so these people are mine."
People "owned" their homes and used whatever land around it to farm, but not as in they had a legal claim to the whole piece of property and a franchise to do with that landed property as they pleased. They owned it because they resided there and could keep up what they were using. Wealthier people had more people to manage more territory in their behalf, but even this was more about the subjects than the land they lived on, which was understood to be incidental compared to how we would see it today. Unoccupied, unused land miles away from where anyone lived was not being fought over. Wherever they lived domination of people was fought for.
Conflicts over land ownership didn't start until the Reconquista just before the modern era. Prior to that the idea that people privately could own land didn't exist. This idea was very helpful for colonization and it is not natural.
We're not talking about the use of violence generally, which is a nuanced and vastly complex topic. We are talking about literally wiping out 37% of humanity, which is much less nuanced or complex. Such ideas should have been left behind during the previous century.
What would the mechanism be to exterminate 37% of the human race with this degree of precision? Who would be in charge of it and why do we trust them not to continue using such a tool? If it's not a military operation, what would it be?
A major, fundamental issue with your suggestion is that it assumes there are multiple species of humans which exist who are fundamentally different on a genetic level. If I was a god who could snap my fingers and instantly obliterate all conservatives, it would not be the end of conservatism. You yourself are locked in violent thinking, are you absolutely certain that your own children couldn't possibly be attracted to violence when you yourself believe that mass violence on an unprecedented scale is the best opportunity to create a just world? Are you certain that no child born of any survivors would carry any temptation to take advantage of others as those in the past have? Are you sure no one in the surviving billions of people, generationally removed from your mass killing, would have the ability to re-invent a dipshit philosophy like fascism? I don't think its bad genes which causes the myriad evils which result from trauma and poverty. As long as there is an incentive for people to behave in anti-social ways, people will behave in anti-social ways.
You are correct that unreasonable people can't be reasoned with. Dogs also can't be reasoned with but are not a threat to society. This is because we manage them. Trump has demonstrated that you can be a fool-whisperer like Cesar Milan is a dog-whisperer. The problem is that he uses his ability to influence fools for evil instead of good. These unreasonable fear-motivated dupes can be dealt with in ways that take advantage of their cowardice to neutralize themselves as a threat or depend on pro-social groups rather than use their cowardice to fuel despotism. The human race of which you and I are part will contain a vast array of people acting and being acted upon. We as a species can be influenced, but eugenic movements to root out undesirables have never worked.
I have never heard an anarchist speak this way. I don't want to be left alone, I simply don't want a class of people who believe they hold authority over me as my superiors. Anarchists shouldn't be using anyone. A stable anarchy can't exist as long as people are still thinking in terms of using each other as resources for their own interests.
Murdering each other is against our nature but we've been doing it prolifically since the advent of agriculture so much so that war is seen as a "natural" part of life. The solution of killing all the bad guys so only good guys are left has probably been on the mind of most of those soldiers and military leader for the last 10,000 years. It turns out this approach doesn't end authoritarianism or violence.
If somehow we killed 37% of the human population in no way would that bring us closer to a fair and equitable world. It would be exactly in line with dominator culture hegemony which has existed for the most recent few thousand years. What you described would not be revolutionary, but typical for the present buccaneer philosophy which is popular among the powerful and their thralls.
In the original Star Wars, the Empire was based on the American empire and the rebellion was based on the Vietcong according to George Lucas.
Cynics are dupes who are easily utilized by the forces which deliberately made them cynical. The foundation of conservative politics.
Agreed. It evokes a whole story. Either the Paladin is so overcommitted to their work to such a degree that they are willing to go on dangerous adventures or the society is so legalistic it's the Paladin's duty to accompany their cases wherever they go without exceptions. Alternatively, maybe the Paladin wanted to be an adventurer anyway to escape their boring life as a parole officer and found just such a situation that they can fufill their desires and duties at the same time.
Too often this option is presented by people who are deliberately manipulating you and causing you to think that you only have the two choices which each benefit them and neither you. Always consider who is offering this choice and why. The true lesser evil here is whatever you have to do to get out of the situation where this choice is being presented to you.
Anti-social socialists are an absolutely fascinating internet phenomenon. I have met a handful in real life, but they're more tolerated for their merits than any kind of influential when it comes to face to face dialogue and praxis.
This appears to be stupid, and it is, but it's mostly evil. Teaching children to accept absurdities and distrust evidence to make them easier to control.
I think a lot of people are neglecting to think of Biden's lifetime record in public office. The United States is the nation on Earth with the greatest proportion of its own citizens imprisoned and we have Biden's 1994 crime bill in large part to thank for that. Unfortunately it wasn't terribly shocking when he went on to be more supportive of the Palestinian genocide than any other president in US history other than Trump.
Empiricism. We need to acknowledge that not everyone considers evidence when determining truth and encourage it way more than we do.
I live around it. I know plenty of people who aren't all the way in the deep end but could eventually go all the way into the deep end. What really helps them not make that final leap is that there is an extremely well deserved stigma against Nazi ideology, the most notorious strain of fascism. There is a gradient and there are plenty of secondary believers whose minds are primed to support a strongman on the elimination of all the bad people keeping society down but would use nicer words to describe it, but tertiary believers who have just been immersed in a deluge of contradictory information can be reasoned with. On this instance at least there is not a lot of tolerance for appeals to popular prejudices which may work out in a general crowd where there isn't a sufficient challenge to it.
"We need to make room for misinformation on our platforms otherwise we won't have mass appeal. A lot of people love to scapegoat populations who can't effectively defend themselves, and leaving them out just because they're contributing to creeping fascism and and multiple ongoing genocides is just petty."
I will never participate in an instance which is federated with Meta or any other profit-driven instance. If profit is more important than responsibility and safety, then irresponsibility and danger can be the only consequence.
It's always important to take a step back and consider that the mega-rich exist in a totally separate reality than the rest of us do. They were raised in a way that they were never forced out of infancy into adulthood like the rest of us were. I hope that eventually we realize that it's not responsible to allow major institutions to be under the control of adults whose worldview has never progressed since the time they were toddlers.
Thanks for writing my autobiography is so few words.
It began on reddit as the general sub for the college dorm #196 at some university, one thing lead to another, and now it's a meme sub which exists everywhere.