Talk about politics here.
Probably quite a quiet thread at the moment I expect.
Politics Discussion: Cynicism Always Warranted
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Christel saw a news story about Truss and asked me why Boris Johnson had to resign. I told her it was because he’s a fucking idiot who fucked up one too many times.
Question for the group: Was my response too nuanced for the lay person who is not familiar with the intricacies of contemporary British politics?
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Question for the group: Was my response too nuanced for the lay person who is not familiar with the intricacies of contemporary British politics?
Sums it up pretty well, although the number is way higher than one.
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Courtesy of the Jimquisition.
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Jesus, Nadine Dorries has been named as the new Home Secretary.
(No of course not. But the fact that it almost seemed possible for that brief moment should feel very worrying indeed.)
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Whoever took over Joe Biden’s Twitter account this year deserves a raise, it’s gone from functional to really sharp.
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I saw this in the latest Popbitch email:
Before he entered the world of politics, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly was a big-shot at Caspian Publishing, where he became the subject of an excellent anecdote among his former colleagues.
It happened one evening, when some of the team decamped to the pub for after-work drinks. Cleverly got chatting to a co-worker who jokingly asked him if he was trying to flirt with her. His gallant riposte?
“Trust me love, if I were flirting with you you’d be foaming at the gash right now.”
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Actual headlines in the UK press:
“Truss to resume fracking, despite tremor risk”
Yes, tremor as in earth tremor, aka earthquake.
Also, go into banking, soon to return to unlimited bonuses.
And let’s not forget: Full speed ahead to fuck up everything for the sake of the NI border!
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These GOP governors especially the ones in Texas and Florida, are sending the migrants to the Blue States and areas like
Martha’s Vineyard and NYC.They know full well that neither area has the full resources to accommodate the influx. The governors just want
to dump them off.Not enough words to describe the GOPers. Add to it all that about half the US voters go GOP.
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Interesting bit of information there that Southern states used to do the same thing with black people.
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I really like this guy John Harris. He’s a journalist with a simple goal, which is always look outside the bubble. He has a clear left wing bias but he’ll give equal time to areas that will oppose that as support it. I’ve railed at The Guardian in the past that as much as they want to be the voice of the left every voice, apart from his, on their podcasts speaks RP. The accent of the ruling class.
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The government here is putting a price ceiling on energy, which is good news. It makes me think if we can put a price ceiling on energy, why not on rent or real estate?
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Just read up a little bit on D66, and they sound like a very interesting party. On paper, they also sound like they have pretty sound policies… but then again, that matters little in a Rutte cabinet. It’s just incredible that that guy is still holding on to power.
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Got to hand it to Truss and Kwarteng, I didn’t expect them to fuck up this badly this quickly.
It’s almost like the people in charge don’t have a fucking clue what they’re doing.
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They think they know what they are doing: Looking after those who earn more than £155,000.
But even some of those people are looking at this and going: Hang on a fucking minute….
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They think they know what they are doing:
They do. Singapore-on- Thames. It’s been threatened from as soon as Brexit passed.
The UK is now in Britannia Unchained mode. The US sent the Chicago Boys to Chile to do their economic experiments in Friedman pure free market economics, Truss and Kwarteng are doing it at home. It is very concerning because all evidence of those experiments is they have only worked short term with the side effect of massively increased inequality which is already bad in the UK. They also partly worked because of the income generated from selling off government assets, most of which have already been sold off apart from the NHS.
The UK also no longer manufactures on any scale as it did in the 1980s, meaning it relies heavily on imports which are all going to increase in price as the pounds drops like a stone.
I suspect very much in the next two years we will have riots on the level of the poll tax protests.
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Yeah, the central conflict in Western nations has been that the “people” technically own the nation politically through their representatives in the government while a few of the people still owned the nation economically. Now, though, the socio-economic philosophy that guides government policy has essentially made it so that the few with economic power own the government too and everyone else just works here – even though they can’t find work or make wages to live on.
The solution obviously is that people just need to work harder. Gotta get that hustle on.
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The rising authoritarianism from the Tories really concerns me; the extra police powers, restrictions on right to protest etc. This may be the biggest con the right wing pulled, convincing people the right wingers are the true freedom lovers, who are not afraid to speak painful truths etc. I am ashamed to say for a while I fell for that con.
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I suspect very much in the next two years we will have riots on the level of the poll tax protests.
Truss might be taking the Thatcher tribute act a little too far.
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If you want to depress yourself, you should watch these documentaries by Al Jazeera about the Labour party, using information from the documents leaked to them recently. Corruption; out-right lies and deceit; undermining of the leader and ordinary party members; thuggery; mud-slinging; intimidation; the use of antisemitism complaints to silence pro-Palestinian voices across the party; ties to the EDL; non-Jewish people presenting themselves as Jewish to make AS complaints against others.
Some of the people entrenched in the Labour party seem like the absolute scum of the earth and Keir Starmer appears to be perfectly happy working with them.
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If you want to depress yourself,
I… feel like I don’t need to further do that, on the day Italy went back to fascism.
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Some of the people entrenched in the Labour party seem like the absolute scum of the earth and Keir Starmer appears to be perfectly happy working with them.
When faced with socialism – even the socialism light of people like Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, the liberal will side with the fascist.
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Pretty sick and outrageous that anyone would sully the memory of Doom like that.
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Liz Truss as PM has done two things.
1. Met the Queen, Queen dies.
2. Drafted a ‘fiscal event’ – currency tanks.
I’m shitting myself on number 3.
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Liz Truss as PM has done two things.
1. Met the Queen, Queen dies.
2. Drafted a ‘fiscal event’ – currency tanks.
I’m shitting myself on number 3.
Let’s hope number 3 is that she proudly leads the Tories into a snap general election.
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3. Backs the kami-Kwasi chancellor.
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I’ll be honest and say I’ve been doing my own little bit of disaster capitalism, transferring money to my UK savings account because I can buy so many pounds for less and can wait for a slow recovery.
In a sense though I am strengthening the pound there by buying so it’s better than shorting.
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Putin supporter shits his pants when he finds out he’s being drafted:
Solovyov gets drafted and goes crazy. pic.twitter.com/g4pIHo1gWx
— Real Subtitles (@R82938886) September 28, 2022
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It actually says ‘fake subtitles’ in the top left at the end but people don’t see it, because they are reading the subtitles.
Moral of the story – learn every global language and never get caught out.
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Can’t even force a vote of no confidence in the government until they come back from conference season.
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If only there were a general election tomorrow.
Yeah, one can only hope that the sentiment holds.
I have to say I’m surprised the mood actually seems to have swung. Felt like no matter what complete clusterfuck they delivered, the Tories were going to keep the majority of the votes.
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Wow:
Chalked outside Kwarteng's house pic.twitter.com/fEYz3uFr2u
— Steve Bonham (@SteveBonham8) October 1, 2022
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It’ll be interesting to see him go head to head with Truss who in her recent radio interviews left long excruciating pauses when asked difficult questions.
I did feel that in their first PMQs together there was a welcome sense that they were actually having an argument over something of substance, and genuinely presenting alternative philosophies for government, rather than the empty rhetoric and panto of the Johnson years. It was a refreshing change.
Once they get back to regular PMQs, I expect Starmer to do his usual job of calmly but effectively pointing out the flaws in his opponent’s argument.
That didn’t really work very well against Johnson, as he effectively refused to engage with the questions in good faith and instead spouted boilerplate general lines about the government’s achievements and/or jokes that he thought would get a good reaction from the Tory MPs.
Now that Truss is in such a pickle, it will be interesting to see whether she continues to try and engage in good faith and defend her position, or whether she falls back on the same kind of empty bluster as Johnson.
My sense is that she wouldn’t be very good at that, as she has no obvious natural charisma or wit, so I feel like either way things could go very badly for her.
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Now that Truss is in such a pickle, it will be interesting to see whether she continues to try and engage in good faith and defend her position, or whether she falls back on the same kind of empty bluster as Johnson.
Having just watched the latest Truss interview this morning, it seems as though she’s determined to not engage with reality altogether. Effectively her position seems to boil down to “well I think I’m right”, despite all the evidence and analysis to the contrary.
Either way, an interview where she commits explicitly to the 45p tax cut and the change in the law on bankers’ bonuses, but refuses to commit to even raising benefits in line with inflation – effectively meaning a real-terms benefits cut – is not something that I can see improving her prospects with the electorate.
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Part of me says the pressure to rejoin the EU is only going to grow. It’ll be years away but it’s here to stay.
Would the EU accept the UK back? I think it is possible as the UK has become the example for why not to leave. Unless Meloni serious fucks with Italy and takes them out of the EU too. Even if that happened the appeal of staying in the single market is too strong.
For decades economic libertarians like Truss and Kwarteng have claimed their ideas needed a chance. They’ve had it and, in the real world of global markets they profess to love, blown it completely and lasted less than 24 hours. Truss and Kwarteng are reduced to brazen assertion, they have no actual evidence to draw on, that they are right and the world is wrong. That kind of attitude tends to end one way – they lose, but not withot doing a lot of damage. They’ve already practically crashed the UK housing market.
Who knew? Truss is doing a Thatcher all right, 1990 Thatcher.
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Now that Truss is in such a pickle, it will be interesting to see whether she continues to try and engage in good faith and defend her position, or whether she falls back on the same kind of empty bluster as Johnson. My sense is that she wouldn’t be very good at that, as she has no obvious natural charisma or wit, so I feel like either way things could go very badly for her.
From what we’ve seen so far I expect her to trot out scripted responses with a lot of repetition.
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Would the EU accept the UK back?
Probably as I think they know the politicians from the European parliament, that most of them worked together bar UKIP and the odd rabid Tory (a big majority of Tory MPs were pro EU before Johnson purged them). If not presented with the current bunch of jokers I could see it.
I would expect much more likely is a customs union return though rather than full EU membership. That was always the grey area with many saying it would remain even with a Brexit vote.
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Agreed – joining customs union / single market is the easiest sell and makes the most economic sense. But it can’t happen at the earliest until late 2024 at best.
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Would the EU accept the UK back?
I think so as the UK is (for now at least) still a major economy and even if only on that basis it makes sense for everyone to enjoy the mutual advantages of EU membership.
I agree with Gar though, rejoining the single market/customs union is a way to make a rapprochement an easier sell to the UK electorate as a whole, because they can spin it as not being the same as a wholesale reversal of Brexit but just a better Brexit than the one the Tories left us with.
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Funnily enough just after reading that I saw this on Twitter:
Steve Baker, former head of ERG apologises to Ireland and the EU for “not always behaving” in a way that they would “trust us” in Brexit negotiations . “I am really sorry about that because relations with Ireland are not where they should be”
Unexpected.
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Yep. Still wouldn’t trust that guy as far as I could defenestrate him.
A couple of months back the MP for Dover, Natalie Elphick, was swearing blind the massive traffic jam of lorries had nothing to do with Brexit. Did people buy her denial? I don’t know. That’s why time is needed to show how bad this all is.
(Businesses have been quick to say how bad it is, farmers too but too many look to still like Johnson’s “fuck business” view.)
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“I am really sorry about that because relations with Ireland are not where they should be”
Probably shouldn’t have threatened to starve us then
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Either way, an interview where she commits explicitly to the 45p tax cut and the change in the law on bankers’ bonuses, but refuses to commit to even raising benefits in line with inflation – effectively meaning a real-terms benefits cut – is not something that I can see improving her prospects with the electorate.
Seems like the penny has dropped as by all accounts there’s a U-turn coming on dropping the 45p tax rate.
Which is good, but does rather underscore the “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing” quality of Truss’s government.
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As far as putting up a unified front against Putin, it would be good PR, but at the same time, realistically that is what the UK is doing with the EU under NATO.
Yeah I think from a foreign policy perspective it really doesn’t make much difference. The EU is the trade body, NATO is the military one. Even within the EU there was never much harmonised foreign policy, you can think back to the ‘freedom fries’ episode where France oppose the Iraq invasion and the UK supported it (arguably caused it with the ‘dodgy dossier’ on WMD although I suspect another excuse would have been found without it).
As discussed I can’t see the UK re-entering the EU in any timescale under 20 years, it’d be the various trade agreements below it, like Norway who are not EU members but are in the free market.
Which is good, but does rather underscore the “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing” quality of Truss’s government.
She still believes it. This u-turn is because backbench MPs have made it pretty clear they’ll reject the whip and won’t vote for it. The papers today even quoting cabinet ministers like the Welsh secretary saying it’s a bad idea, plus Gove and Shapps.
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She still believes it. This u-turn is because backbench MPs have made it pretty clear they’ll reject the whip and won’t vote for it. The papers today even quoting cabinet ministers like the Welsh secretary saying it’s a bad idea, plus Gove and Shapps.
Yeah, Gove was making his opposition clear on the Sunday interview circuit yesterday too. It looked like it wouldn’t pass.
I think the U-turn is the right thing to do but it does make Truss look rather weak this early in her tenure to not be able to get sufficient party support for a flagship policy, albeit one that sounds like it was sprung on the cabinet without warning.
Then again maybe it’s a good thing for confidence in the UK in general to see that there are still sufficiently cool heads among Tory MPs to be able to rein in unpredictable and damaging moves from Truss and Kwarteng.
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Rein in him? That ain’t happening from the interview quotes I’ve seen. He’s lost the country £65bn, does he give a shit about that or apologise? Nope.
He’s the kind of individual who, if asked if he would do the same thing knowing it’d cost £65bn and his party’s entire economic reputation, would say yes.
Damage is done, the mortgage market is reeling, loads of people will be paying more.
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Oh I agree 100% on the effects already being felt, but the point is that the wider government won’t let him actually enact this recklessly announced policy, so they can at least limit the long-term damage.
The truth is I don’t see Kwarteng lasting long under these circumstances. He seems entirely unsuited to the job.
The difficulty for Truss is that the sooner she replaces him, the worse her judgement looks in terms of appointing him in the first place – but the longer she leaves him in post, the worse it looks in terms of keeping him there.
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Oh, he went for the Twitter JPEG – the most insincere form of communication going.
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Truss and Kwarteng are hand in hand, they’ve written this philosophy together for all to see. Sacking Kwarteng is just offering up a sacrificial lamb.
She is a very dangerous woman, she believes extreme neoliberal economics will answer everything, we have plentiful evidence from Chile, Reagan and Thatcher they radically increase inequality and just funnel the money upwards.
The thing is that even with the ‘one nation’ centre right Tories (see Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart etc) kicked out of the party by Johnson her vision is still too extreme for enough of them.
An example of this thinking is her view on the UKs low productivity compared to the rest of the G7 since 2010 (except in London). It must be lazy workers in the regions.
It’s a ridiculous notion. Productivity is a measure of money generated per hour worked. If you are a hedge fund manager in London generating a £35m profit at the end of the year your productivity is off the scale, if you are a cleaner working exactly the same hours you generate next to nothing.
How are Brits so lazy that the French have higher productivity? The French with generous benefits, a 35 hour week, strong unions and frequent strikes. Only one country in the G7 pursued austerity after the 2008 crash, the same one that has no productivity because it has had no investment for 12 years. Her cult means that answer can never be accepted, the market and small government is always the solution.
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Oh, he went for the Twitter JPEG – the most insincere form of communication going.
I always love when Stephanie Sterling calls out computer game publishers for the “sincere JPEG” after they fuck up, I assume the same will happen here if they cast their eye upon it.
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Truss and Kwarteng are hand in hand, they’ve written this philosophy together for all to see. Sacking Kwarteng is just offering up a sacrificial lamb.
It’s a fair point, but I think part of the issue with Kwarteng is how much worse he’s then made the problem by being unable to provide the market with any assurances after his budget, by being unwilling to even recognise the market reaction as a product of his policy announcement, refusing to appear to be considering alternative approaches, failing to see how bad it would look to be gathering at a party with bankers ahead of the budget and briefing them ahead of his announcement… he just seems pretty inept as a politician even outside of these disastrous policies.
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“I am really sorry about that because relations with Ireland are not where they should be”
Probably shouldn’t have threatened to starve us then
It was 170 years ago, Lorcan. Just let it go.
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“I am really sorry about that because relations with Ireland are not where they should be”
Probably shouldn’t have threatened to starve us then
It was 170 years ago, Lorcan. Just let it go.
Maybe, but isn’t that the same timeframe your favourite Legion of Superheroes lineup was published in?
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“I am really sorry about that because relations with Ireland are not where they should be”
Probably shouldn’t have threatened to starve us then
It was 170 years ago, Lorcan. Just let it go.
Maybe, but isn’t that the same timeframe your favourite Legion of Superheroes lineup was published in?
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he just seems pretty inept as a politician even outside of these disastrous policies.
I wouldn’t disagree but Truss pretty much did exactly the same, she hid for 4 days with him and all her radio and TV appearances were just saying they’ll carry on regardless. Which is my issue in that from Johnson to Truss the trend is to appoint people, however inept, who will stand in lockstep with you. Nadine Dorries as an example, who would walk over hot coals for Boris and put into a cabinet role even though she appeared drunk and incoherent most of the time.
So my expectation is that if Kwarteng went you’d just get another face with the same policies because they are Liz Truss policies. She has a Fulton Street approved cabinet (only the Welsh secretary spoke out, I expect his days are numbered). The only thing preventing her is her ideas are so cultish that even with a 70+ majority she can’t be guaranteed to pass the house vote, which is extraordinary in itself.
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Zelenskiy says Ukraine forces liberated Arkhanhelske, Myrolyubivka in Kherson region | Reuters
I have been surprised – Ukraine is pushing its advantages (and NATO assistance) to the limit while Russia seems to have just the most dysfunctional and demotivated military seen since, I don’t know – the US Army in the last days of the Vietnam War.
Still, I believe Putin does not see this as a war against Ukraine. I think that he thinks there is no such thing as Ukraine. That the Ukrainians are just Russians who’ve been swayed by the fascist power of the United States and Western Europe. So, in his mind, this already is WW3 and he is fighting the United States.
Which ends up making the possibility of nuclear weapons a bit higher.
People talk about the possibility, but I haven’t seen much analysis of what happens when a major nation uses nuclear weapons in a conventional war. Could it be a response like after the Great War where nerve and poison gas was banned? Or will it basically overturn the Geneva Convention and all weapons are fair game?
I think there are plenty of influential people in and out of governments all over the world that would welcome a crack in that dam. People who felt limited by the unwillingness to use these weapons. So I’d like to see more thought in what the response to such an event will be – what strong response will be taken – to prevent the normalization of devastating weapons of mass destruction. There are plenty of hotspots around the world – Iran v. Israel, Pakistan v. India, North v. South Korea where that could change everything.
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I have been surprised – Ukraine is pushing its advantages (and NATO assistance) to the limit while Russia seems to have just the most dysfunctional and demotivated military seen since, I don’t know – the US Army in the last days of the Vietnam War.
I heard an analyst say a large part of their problem is Russia is very kleptocratic. So the Kremlin were getting reports of equipment purchases and recruitment when a lot of those funds were getting skimmed off by the various people down the chain. So they’d pay for 50 machine guns and 30 would be bought and the money for the other 20 trousered by some bureaucrat.
That’s why it has surprised them, and also the rest of the world observing, how ineffective they have been. Pretty much all military analysts were expecting they’d take Kyiv within a matter of weeks.
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Still, I believe Putin does not see this as a war against Ukraine. I think that he thinks there is no such thing as Ukraine. That the Ukrainians are just Russians who’ve been swayed by the fascist power of the United States and Western Europe. So, in his mind, this already is WW3 and he is fighting the United States.
Definitely yes on believing Ukrainians are Russians. This is something most Russians believe, even Putin’s opponents. Navalny for instance doesn’t believe otherwise, and he has also said Crimea is part of Russia. I don’t believe that Putin believes the West is fascist though. This is just something he uses as justification for his actions. Like in his latest speech he called the West satanic because of transgenders. I don’t think he really believes this, it’s just meant to get people angry at the West. He just hates the West because it is an obstacle to his power.
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I think you also have to assume that everything Putin says is entirely for his own people. He doesn’t address us personally because he doesn’t care what we think, but he needs to keep his own people happy (or at least the important segment of his own people; the minorities in the outer provinces can burn).
That’s why the Russian media have been scrambling to blame everyone but Putin for the bungled mobilization. It’s why Putin resisted mobilization for so long. When he was force-recruiting the scum from the south and east that was fine, but this partial mobilization threatened the metropolitan elite, and he can’t afford to be seen as doing that.
The exodus from Russia (which means, the exodus of people from Moscow and St. Pete, because again the rest of the country doesn’t matter) must be really bothering Putin too. Someone I know finally made it to Khazakstan this weekend, after mumbling about it for months. Other people I know were more forward looking and left months ago. And these are the young, professional, wealth-generating people that you can’t afford to lose from a country that already has a old-skewed demographic.
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There are a lot of oligarchs who are feeling the pinch because of Putin’s action and want things to get back to normal so the sanctions are lifted. I do wonder if there are those who are giving Putin enough rope to hang himself (maybe literally) and if it looks like he really will use a nuke, they will remove him from power and replace him with someone less warmongering. The sanctions are affecting everyone’s wallet and I’m sure they want to get back to making lots of money again.
I can see greed overriding nationalism to end this war.
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Well then the oligarchs can help the traditional Russian solution to dysfunctional leadership along.
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The nuclear option is a bluff,
It’s a deeply illogical option. The problem is the systems we have put those decisions in single human beings.
Radiolab went into some detail a couple of years back to explain why the hopes of advisers and a combined response putting a break on it are not true. They focused on the US of course as they had the information and contacts there but because any intercontinental ballistic strike only takes 20 minutes to land there is no space for consultation, the President calls with the codes and the launch is made. They interviewed a guy who was tasked with operating the launch and was fired because in tests he displayed hesitation. Since the logistics are the same in the other direction and the regime more autocratic there is no reason to assume it isn’t the same in Russia.
So as long as leaders like Trump or Putin are notionally rational or have self-preservation or enrichment of wealth in mind we should be fine, in this case selfishness is desirable. If one of them loses their marbles though we need to worry.
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Radiolab went into some detail a couple of years back to explain why the hopes of advisers and a combined response putting a break on it are not true. They focused on the US of course as they had the information and contacts there but because any intercontinental ballistic strike only takes 20 minutes to land there is no space for consultation, the President calls with the codes and the launch is made. They interviewed a guy who was tasked with operating the launch and was fired because in tests he displayed hesitation. Since the logistics are the same in the other direction and the regime more autocratic there is no reason to assume it isn’t the same in Russia.
But there’s also the famous story of the Soviet officer in charge of launching a nuclear counter-strike who, when erroneously told by the automated systems that a nuclear was was literally underway, said “Nah, this is a stupid idea.” And probably saved the world.
Which is also funny because the Soviets had been bluffing that their perfect system was entirely automated so a counter-strike was guaranteed, impossible to stop, so watch out America! And of course it wasn’t automated, there was some poor bloke pushing a button, because Soviet IT was rubbish (and still is). There’s a funny pattern developing with Russians and their bluffs…
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David’s going to look pretty stupid if we’re all dead by next week.
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Game Theory (Nash’s version, not von Neumann’s version) supports me. You apply the principle of “least regrets”: which of these outcomes will I regret least in the morning?
So, you are side B:
Side A launches, Side B retaliates – You’ll be dead, and so will the rest of the world, so you’ll regret this choice.
Side A launches, Side B doesn’t retaliate – You’ll still be dead, but life on Earth might continue, so you feel morally better (for the next 20 minutes).
Side A doesn’t launch, Side B mistakenly retaliates – Well, now Side A is going to retaliate against *you*, so this is just choice 1 again.
Side A doesn’t launch, Side B doesn’t retaliate – no regrets, everybody’s happy tomorrow morning.
You path of least regrets is always to not retaliate.
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Game theory requires at least some rational thought, though. Our government leaders aren’t exactly the most rational. And they seem to be getting less rational with each passing year. And many of them have shown a clear lack of care, if not outright disdain, for the planet and life as a whole.
You could also argue that the path of least regret is full annihilation. Because if you (and the world) are dead then nobody will be wasting any time on regrets.
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Even if Putin was replaced at this point, it’s hard to imagine another leader turning around completely and walking back the annexation. How can you start your leadership with so obviously losing a war?
It can be done quite easily.
The point of having a new leader is to end the war and bring about peace. That’s why you have a new leader in the first place. Everyone knows the “annexations” were the bullshit rantings of the ex-leader. Putin is the one everything will be dumped on. The new guy just says the annexations won’t count as a way to bring peace to the region and begin the healing process. The new guy may even offer to help rebuild as a peace offering and to engender goodwill with the Ukraine and the rest of the world. (Also, allows the oligarghs to make money.) The new guy will be the “good” guy. He will be the one who prevented nuclear war. He opens up the pipelines again and the sanctions get lifted.
You don’t even have to say Russia lost the war. The new leader “ended the military agression in the Ukraine”. Technically correct but, yeah, the world knows the truth that they got their ass handed to them.
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I tend to agree with Todd here. I think it is relatively easy to change tack with a new broom.
You don’t really have to concede any defeat, it makes me laugh that in the US nobody will ever say they lost the Vietnam war. Everyone in Vietnam thinks they did and nobody in the US does. In the US narrative they retreated from political pressures, from Vietnam if you retreat you have lost. You can spin either argument and they have done successfully for their respective audiences.
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Game theory requires at least some rational thought, though. Our government leaders aren’t exactly the most rational. And they seem to be getting less rational with each passing year. And many of them have shown a clear lack of care, if not outright disdain, for the planet and life as a whole.
“Rationality will not save us.” – Robert McNamara
“I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.”
If the weapons exist, then they are ineffective unless there is a willingness to use them and a system in place to ensure their use. It’s an empty deterrent if the enemy knows you will not use them. But their use is inevitable if the enemy does not care if you use them.
Most of the world’s political leaders are not concerned about the survival of the human race or the world, but about the survival of their nations and their political power. The nation is not necessarily the people and the lives of those living within its borders – it is the conceptual structure that organizes those lives and in many ways very separate from the actual people in it. More and more, I believe, the mass of people in the world feel more like residents of a territory rather than citizens of a nation. I would imagine that most Russians feel that way more than most Ukrainians – especially now that the invasion has brought them together (nevertheless, obviously many Ukrainians fled).
For those leaders who feel some ownership over the nation and the national identity, I’m sure many of them would think the same way as Putin should the world begin to turn against them or their interests.
“As a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state, I want to ask myself the question: ‘Why do we need such a world if Russia is not in it?’” – Putin
After WW2, France and the U.K. did some horrible things to try to hold on to their colonial holdings as their influence on the world waned. I’m actually more concerned at what the United States would do should its influence begin to diminish significantly or if the entire world turned against it. With a president like Biden – no matter how many gaffes or mistakes he makes – I feel more confident that he is also concerned about that. About the possibility that the United States could become a pariah in the world. While with a President like Trump or anyone who would follow his example, I don’t have any confidence that they would be concerned about that.
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Putin’s not going without the push of a bullet, so any successor will easily be able to reverse his policies after, I think.
Nah, that’s never going to happen. If he does go, he’ll be gently pushed out and retire at least as far as the public stuff is concerned.
But I think the idea of Putin being ousted anytime soon is mostly wishful thinking. Russia is locked into this war, and that’s how things will remain for a good long time now. The world will have to deal with that the best it can.
(Which as far as Germany is concerned mainly means Jesus, just stop with the fucking bureaucracy and build as many windmills and solar farms as quickly as humanly possible.)
