Do not, my friends, become addicted to bad news. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
That’s because the governing politicians are complicit, it is really that simple. Only reason why France stayed out of it in 2003 was because French were even more complicit in Saddam regime with how heavily they were invested in Iraqi Oil so the reason they were staying out of it was because of conflict of interest.
I am not basing it on the online communities I interact with of course, as otherwise I’d have a much higher opinion of Americans. I am basing it on more regular Americans I met and interacted with, political developments, media, political polling and statistics in general. Americans also often have less idea about politics of rest of the world (which is natural, as US is center of global politics and people from outside of US know much more about US politics than other way around usually) and don’t realize some of the things they complain about as uniquely American just isn’t and that funnily might be another manifestation of American exceptionalism. This is not to say that there aren’t bloodthirsty warmongers in America, you are governed by such a cohort already and both parties are more or less pro-war. It is just rightwing populism, chauvinism and jingoism exists everywhere and I don’t see Americans as particularly above average in that regard and that again is despite the American government’s efforts.
That’s exactly what I am getting at, American government and media at every turn tries to evoke chauvinism and stoke jingoistic sentiments in general public of America and despite that the population isn’t significantly chauvinistuc and jingoistic proportionally and has a significant amount of people who are consistently anti-war and anti-intervention on solely humanitarian grounds.
I do appreciate and value your self-criticism however as someone not from US, it’s exactly this sentiment that one’s own country and its population is not sufficiently against senseless suffering that creates the environment that makes it impossible for a consensus to form which allows people to merely acquiesce to whatever agenda politicians want to see through. Believing we can always do better prevents apathy which is so effortlessly pervasive.
Trump is so inspirationally consistent in his disrespect of the army and soldiers.
It some ways existence of US and Israel is a moral hazard, because it can too easily validate unexamined beliefs about the world and be an obstacle to introspection about one’s moral values because it is too easy to just take for granted the fact that US and Israel are so oppressive and destructive that it overshadows everything else. This is a pitfall I see many people fall into, especially in West, where they think their moral duty done simply because they are critical of US and Israel. It is easy to criticize others (especially when we are talking about geopolitics impact and humanitarian catastrophe that is US Israel) and difficult to self-criticize with lingering national liberal sentiments that are the foundational ideology of all nation-states but one should realize the magnitude of damage US and Israel does only makes it easier to think oneself principled without ever putting those principles to test.
My perspective on this is that what are we comparing this to, exactly? If we are to see American population as exceptionally bellicose does it follow naturally that other countries (especially in the Western political order) have populations less supportive of their country’s military actions? I think in most countries a large portion of the population simply doesn’t even examine this, they just think it is the government doing government things, there is a well-known tendency to rally to flag or at best simple indifference. I can’t in good faith say that American population is more bellicose because there are politicians from other countries (who very much are the same libs as you describe here in ideology and behavior alike) who criticize American government’s actions because their politics and interests didn’t bend that way while the population of those said countries are completely indifferent about whatever their military is doing at the time. A lack of opportunity and a whole lot of untested principles doesn’t make for a better morality, especially when it is so quiet as to be internalized completely.
In that respect, the fact that I see so many Americans so starkly opposing not only their government’s actions (whether out of factionalism like liberals talking about procedure and decorum or genuine anti-war stance even if comes from weird libertarian beliefs nested in American exceptionalism) but also genuinely oppose their own state and military’s circumstances and stakes in the global order to benefit of American Empire is something that I find valuable. It is then not that America doesn’t have bloodthirsty warmongers, warhawks, outright ideological automatons lockstep with whatever their party line is or everything else, it is that those exists everywhere else as well with a larger portion of population simply existing in quiet assent or silent indifference.
It reminds me, in a roundabout way, of Westerners accusing non-Western people from war torn countries of violent radicalism when a lot of Western populations radicalized to violent rightwing regime with some of the highest standards of living in the world and having faced no conflict or violence in their lives. Simply put, the standards are not the same to say American population is simply more bloodthirsty because American government is involved in more wars with little to no input from the population, Europe was involved in basically almost all of American adventurism and in cases where it wasn’t (like France in Iraq War, they were simply too invested in Iraq to support a war and it wasn’t due to any anti-war sentiment in France and they bombed Libya more than America did when it was in their interest to do so) yet you don’t see as much of a contentious discourse as Americans get into nor as much of a principled anti-war stance even from bizarre ideological fronts.
So overall I do think America is not exceptionally warmongering as a population, certainly they are not as chauvinistic as some other states nor so easily pulled into jingoism despite the government’s efforts to keep those impulses under control.
Hot take but I don’t think America has a particularly bloodthirsty or warmongering population, that’s despite the constant consent manufacturing and propaganda. A lot of people, especially in West, have extremely uncritical acceptance and reflexive defense about their countries’ military actions in a way, it comes to them so naturally that they are not even aware that they more or less just acquiesce whatever their respective governments tell them as reason, so they default to conforming to raison d’etat consensus as nation-state ideology. Meanwhile Americans appear more zealous because American population is more polarized and inherently more outspoken about these things. It’s one of those things that becomes more visible the more contentious it is, paradoxically appearing more accepted when there isn’t actually a consensus.
Iranian AI-enriched animation reserves have been deployed.
This article serves the purpose of trying to preemptively deflect the possibility of comparing ICE to Israel, but rather to project against groups US and Israel fights.
I find oolong’s taste too complex and rich to be drinking too much all the time, it is less of a fixture compared to black and green tea.
Taking that much land inland is truly against the spirit of the nation of Venice.
I don’t think there is any hypocrisy between straddling Byzantium with debt and representing their misfortunes at the time like the Earthquake in Gallipoli or repeated civil wars with events so you have to react to them and navigate them within game mechanics and the game rewarding you doing exact same steps in exact same order with rewards that bypass game mechanics and give you bunch of free stuff so you can take everything easily once you survive the first few years.
Besides Byzantium is favorite country if every deus vulting GSG fan so they get the first DLC anyway above and before many other countries and regions both ascendant and troubled at this time so complaining about them specifically is silly too. We will likely see them given silly amount of momentum for recovery that they compete with Ottomans on expansion into Balkans and Anatolia soon enough.
That’s right little Byzantium you are in Ottoman country now, enjoy the earthquakes.
Would you have more fun if there were no obstacles?
This estimation is based on nominal GDP per capita, Turkey currently has higher GDP per capita than Malaysia but these economic predictions that extend further than 5 years are either alarmist or smug with no real basis since they barely ever do anything but extend current trends over standard models. Likely nobody was predicting in 2007 that UK would fall so far behind US in terms of GDP per capita by 2030.
It’s interesting how a derogatory term like lunatic was actually less judgmental in its original inception since it implied a common human condition rather than implying an essential character of a person.
It’s well appreciated.
I understand now what you mean especially in regards to gender neutral and explicitly degendered, though I have my reservations of the supposed gender neutral or degendered words that use masculine form as default form still even if they obviously serve that function in terms of grammatical gender. I suppose I was thrown off by the set criteria and them being used as requirements. Nevertheless I think there are many languages that use gender neutral terms that can be bent way better to be degendered proactively than using default masculine forms in Romance languages in this regard.
There is a lot of inertia to lingua franca and because English cemented itself as such at such a crucial time of internet age globalization I don’t think it will be toppled any time soon because it completely left the anglophone world, it is also a pleasant and flexible language without a language academy so it serves that function really well. I also especially don’t think Esperanto will replace it, nor do I think a sign language will. In regards to Esperanto both because I don’t think it is useful or widespread enough for that and in terms of sign language because I think learning a second language comes easier to most people than learning a sign language.
I am not at all annoyed or tense nor seeking conflict in this, I apologize if I come off as confrontational as it is a general fault of mine.
I just felt a bit flabbergasted that it is of import that a non-binary pronoun ought to not be gender neutral by default. As to put it in more concise terms, I am trying to understand why a non-binary pronoun not being gender neutral is a criteria, and why using an originally gendered pronoun to reach a gender neutral pronoun meets this criteria but using a gender neutral pronoun to create another gender neutral pronoun doesn’t. I would definitely want to hear your arguments against English or Chinese as international languages, in context of both being highly analytic languages with a wealth of general and specific vocabulary.
It’s also natural to make mistakes especially one is making statements of to top of their head, what I said was not meant as a gotcha about how long Esperanto existed but the fact that its borrowings seem much more recent rather than it being a history of centuries long process. Feeling embarrassed if one feels they failed to live up to their own standards is okay too of course, we do have obligations to ourselves.
For clarity and in sake of honesty I do have somewhat of a negative opinion on Esperanto but that mainly is due to its existence as the most popular conlang and the fact I find its claim to internationality a bit fanciful and optimistic to say the least.
I love to eat carobs but it genuinely is not a good substitute for cocoa for chocolate even though it feels like it should be. It’s a good substitute to just eat a whole carob when you want a chocolate bar though.