Zompist Bboard Again

alice wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 3:53 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2026 6:23 pm I for one think a President that responds with pornographic doodles when asked for policy objectives would be an improvement over Trump.

I for one think pornographic doodles would be an improvement over Trump.

I am ready to be elected president

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 3:50 pm It may be a bigger issue for Islam, which from Muhammad's day was ruling as a minority over a non-Muslim majority. This situation persisted for a surprisingly long time. (Suprising for an outsider, I mean, based on present-day distribution. Maybe it's a commonplace for Muslims.)

Most people today probably don't realize (I assume rotting bones does, OTOH) that Muslim-ruled lands contained substantial Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Hindu populations for centuries, and there are still considerable Arab Christian populations in Muslim-majority areas (and there were significant Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish populations in Muslim-majority lands up until very recently in the bigger scheme of things). (The numbers of Arab and Coptic Christians are about 10-15 million at the present, and for the sake of comparison there are about 15.8 million Jews in the entire world.)

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 4:18 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 3:04 am But I've heard people saying that after the Iran debacle, Trump might try to save face with an easy victory like toppling Cuba. Trump has been blockading Cuba for a while.

Unfortunately, all too likely. He thought his Venezuela escapade was a "success". As I said, he's jabbing the "military" button over and over, hoping that this time it works.

If he was at all cunning, he would declare victory in Iran and withdraw (which is more or less what he did last year). I don't know if he has that much smarts left, and the Iranians may simply not let him.

Gas has gone up from $3.00 to $4.20 a gallon around here. Great move, Donnie. Since fertilizer is affected too, food prices will eventually rise.

The big winners of the war are Russia and China. China's oil tankers are allowed to pass through the Gulf unmolested, and Trump handed Russia a windfall of oil money. Russia is also supposedly providing Iran intel. A little face-saver for Putin since he was unable to help Maduro or Assad.

Because nobody's mentioned it yet, I note that a big reason why Trump does what he does is because he's a narcissist trying to impress the people that he looks up to: Putin, Kim, Netanyahu, etc. What happened was that Netanyahu got in Trump's ear and easily convinced him that attacking Iran would be a great idea, telling him it would quickly collapse and people would love him for it because "People always love wartime presidents!". Trump, because he's so eager to please, and ignorant about the world, went along with it, and is now having a bit of buyer's remorse, but his immense hubris, stupidity, and a lifetime of insulation from all negative consequences of his actions prevent him from blaming himself.

Vlad Vexler has some great videos about this:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6fvHOOFYbw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmTeg0B9tH8

Trump actually believes very little, beyond increasing his own wealth, and his view of tariffs as fines that other countries pay, and how effective they are. Whenever I hear somebody call Trump a fascist, it feels a bit unfair to Hitler and Mussolini, because at least they believed in something (like a unified Greater Germany or a restored Roman Empire), but Trump doesn't even believe in anything! He just drifts from one whim to the next, easily influenced by the people he wants to please, because he's an extremely insecure narcissist, desperate for approval from people that are deftly using him to advance their own countries' interests.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 5:24 pm
but Trump doesn't even believe in anything! He just drifts from one whim to the next, easily influenced by the people he wants to please, because he's an extremely insecure narcissist, desperate for approval from people that are deftly using him to advance their own countries' interests.

For what it's worth, I think his resentments of the various groups and people he hates or looks down on are real and authentic. Not much else about him is, but that is.

Previously, Trump has said it's great that oil prices are high. The US is a net exporter of oil, so high prices will benefit American companies. This created a PR emergency for oil companies: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/1 ... g-00826428

Now the US has removed sanctions on Iran's oil as the war continues: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/p ... roid-share

---

Shia Iran supporters are saying that as soon as Trump runs away with his tail between his legs, Iran should shoot down every satellite used by America and Israel. They use those satellites to locate and assassinate Iranians every six months. Down with global communication...

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 2:27 am @rotting bones, re: your question whether the Iran War "surprises" anyone - well, a lot of people had assumed for a while that the rise of Trumpism meant the return of the old isolationist/paleoconservative tendency on the US right-wing.

I really don't understand this. Trump has an atrocious record on war from his previous term.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 8:22 am I said before, and I might say again, that I think that the Protestant doctrine of salvation through faith alone started out as an overreaction to Renaissance-era Catholic priests running around telling people that salvation comes from good works, and that "good works", in that context, means "giving the Catholic Church money". An understandable overreaction, IMO, but still an overreaction.

I'm repeating what I was told in a Protestant theology lecture.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 3:50 pm I think it's a late phenomenon that religions worry about unbelievers at all. They are way more concerned with the bullshit of the believers.

Historically, most religious people were idealists like leftists are today. Back in the day, they didn't pose as worldly people wise in the knowledge of human nature. Idealists have a tendency to see their compatriots as traitors.

Christianity has always been obsessed with curbing heresy (from Greek for "choice"). See what they did to people who disagreed with their glorious Councils. Later, there was an anti-witch hysteria: https://youtu.be/AIz7a7ClqmY There was a Satanic Panic in the 80's and 90's. That was only few decades ago.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 3:50 pm It may be a bigger issue for Islam, which from Muhammad's day was ruling as a minority over a non-Muslim majority. This situation persisted for a surprisingly long time. (Suprising for an outsider, I mean, based on present-day distribution. Maybe it's a commonplace for Muslims.)

The Quran preaches against "hypocrites". This is why mainstream Sunnism has to take a stand against "takfirism", declaring Muslims to be unbelievers over minor disagreements. The faction historically infamous for takfirism is now known as Ibadi Islam, which is the majority in Oman. In modern times, Wahhabism is accused of takfirism by traditionalist (not just traditional) Muslims of all kinds.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 3:21 pm Christianity has always been obsessed with curbing heresy (from Greek for "choice"). See what they did to people who disagreed with their glorious Councils.

They didn't have councils till they had the Emperor— the first one was called by Constantine.

(If a religion doesn't have a state to back it up, all it can do is argue. Cf. rabbinic Judaism, or Daoism.)

In modern times, Wahhabism is accused of takfirism by traditionalist (not just traditional) Muslims of all kinds.

The Wahhabis are pretty scary now that they have oil money. Are they able to establish schools and spread their ideas in (say) India and Indonesia?

(An acquaintance of mine is Malaysian and she tends to see Muslims west of India as stodgy and arrogant.)

With all apologies for sound like a doomer over the years, I just worry that people here and liberals in general have not given enough thought to the worst case scenario and how to prepare for it. Mark once observed that for conservatives, it's still the 60s with stratospheric taxes and rioting hippies. It feels to me like liberals have the opposite problem. For them, it's still the 90s with authoritarian regimes collapsing left and right and the economy booming. The rise of far right politics has caught them completely off-guard and now they have no idea how to fight all these ethnonationalists and looks-maxxers. We can no longer dismiss the reactionary turn of zoomers as some passing fad or statistical illusion. Nor can we ignore the fantastical power of near-trillionaires in the tech industry plotting against liberal democracy.

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 4:39 pm With all apologies for sound like a doomer over the years, I just worry that people here and liberals in general have not given enough thought to the worst case scenario and how to prepare for it.[...] It feels to me like liberals have the opposite problem. For them, it's still the 90s with authoritarian regimes collapsing left and right and the economy booming.

Jeez, thanks for reading parts of what I've said for thirty years and remembering none of it.

It's no use trying to educate you, but yes, people are aware of the problem and actually doing things about it. Maybe you could join them instead of patting yourself on the back for advocating surrender to the God-Emperor.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 5:03 pmIt's no use trying to educate you, but yes, people are aware of the problem and actually doing things about it. Maybe you could join them instead of patting yourself on the back for advocating surrender to the God-Emperor.

Just to name one example of the many problems facing us, a recent poll found that zoomers are even more conservative than boomers. The poll found that zoomers were twice as likely as boomers to believe that women should obey their husbands for instance, which is quite an astounding result. The generation that laughed at Jackie Gleason punching his wife in the kisser is somehow more enlightened on women's rights than people under thirty. What exactly are people doing to address the reactionary backsliding of younger people?

Let me stress that I am not advocating surrender or even attacking liberals necessarily, nor am I declaring the battle already lost. Nonetheless we are clearly losing the battle right now and desperately need to turn things around before the reactionaries achieve their coup de grace. Sorry for sounding like such a downer over the past year and a half, but we really facing the crisis of the century.

I strongly disagree with David Schraub's still-just-barely-somewhat-zionist-for-now stance, but he has some interesting thoughts on "The Jews made us do it!" as an escape route from the Iran fiasco for leading Republicans, potentially including Trump himself. Equally interesting is the comment by Alex I. right at the top of the comments section. https://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2026/03/l ... ly-be.html

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 8:49 pmJust to name one example of the many problems facing us, a recent poll found that zoomers are even more conservative than boomers.

"A recent poll" can find just about anything you want. It's like looking in a book of symptoms to find out how many terminal incurable diseases you're suffering from.

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 8:49 pmWhat exactly are people doing to address the reactionary backsliding of younger people?

Probably quite a lot which you're unaware of, or are choosing to ignore.

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 8:49 pmLet me stress that I am not advocating surrender or even attacking liberals necessarily, nor am I declaring the battle already lost. Nonetheless we are clearly losing the battle right now and desperately need to turn things around before the reactionaries achieve their coup de grace.

Give some examples of things which "we" should be doing but aren't, and I'm sure plenty of people can provide examples of people who are actually doing them. And what do you imagine "their coup de grace" to consist of? How sustainable would it be?

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 8:49 pm Sorry for sounding like such a downer over the past year and a half, but we really facing the crisis of the century.

I don't blame you for getting depressed about world events; they get me down too. But bear in mind that (1) your country has been here before, albeit in different clothing, and (2) it has always found a way out.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 4:02 pm They didn't have councils till they had the Emperor— the first one was called by Constantine.

IIRC:

Pre-Orthodox Christianity had intense rhetoric about people who believed differently.

With the development of orthodoxy, Christians started forming clearer ideas about who is or isn't heretical.

After they took over the empire, they had the power to act on these accumulated beliefs, even though these were still an amorphous mass of tendencies at that point.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 4:02 pm (If a religion doesn't have a state to back it up, all it can do is argue. Cf. rabbinic Judaism, or Daoism.)

Taoists have controlled theocratic states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_th ... ks_of_Rice

The problem with spreading false beliefs is that even if they sound helpful, there are always perverse repercussions. For example, the Islamic belief that wealth comes from charity sounds socially beneficial. That is until you realize it's simultaneously a way to blame poor people as not being generous, entrench the moral superiority of the wealthy as being generous, make bare necessities conditional on the whims of the wealthy, etc.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 4:02 pm The Wahhabis are pretty scary now that they have oil money. Are they able to establish schools and spread their ideas in (say) India and Indonesia?

There are open-minded Wahhabis too. I've seen them both IRL and online: https://youtu.be/mkZg2Rjo15I

There are also members of larger sects who are worse than the Wahhabis in practice. The Taliban are technically Hanafi, one of the most open-minded of the traditional sects. If you look at the principles of Hanafism, it is associated with Maturidi theology, which explicitly believes in both science and reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturidism (Often, Islamic scholars say they believe in science, but they don't agree that what contemporary scientists say is scientific.) Even the Wahhabis believe in women's education. The Taliban's excuse is that while they were cut off from Islamic scholarship, they confused Pashtun tribal law with Islam. Now they refuse to listen to anyone else.

There are others who don't have that excuse. On the subcontinent, the fundamentalists are often part of the Deobandi movement (edit: also Hanafi). They are not Taliban, but they are still religious fundies.

On the other hand, Wahhabism did have a detrimental effect on Islam across the world. I don't know about madrasas. I do know people go to Saudi Arabia for Hajj and come back with Wahhabi fundamentalist beliefs or an Arab fashion sense.

It's very difficult to get Western liberals to accept how different Wahhabism is from mainstream Islam a century ago. People in the West tend to think Islam has always been fanatical. This is historically false. Traditionally, Christianity has been much more fanatical than Islam. It's also difficult to get them to accept that Mecca only became Wahhabi in the 20th century. This is sometimes liberalism's fault, which pushes timeless ideals or cultural reification over historical understanding. Even today's "far left" often consists of extreme liberals who deny they are liberals.

History shows that ideology has a complex relationship with social practice. Overall, it's rarely as simple as: a piece of paper tells people to do something, so they do it en masse. Individuals might, but not whole societies. Most people can't even bring themselves to do what they believe they should be doing.

Men discriminate against women less because of ideology than following common sense self-interest: They want to disempower a different group of people because they think it will get them more goodies. Women sometimes want men to do the work because they are lazy and would rather be taken care of, etc.

One area where ideology has a direct effect is in what a society considers high class. In religious Muslim communities (my family was never seriously religious; my father voted for the Communists), wearing lots of clothing is considered highly respectable. IIRC for people who pray in Arabic, there's even a pun: Oh Coverer, just as I cover myself, so do you cover my sins. (Edit: As-Sattar?)

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 19, 2026 4:02 pm (An acquaintance of mine is Malaysian and she tends to see Muslims west of India as stodgy and arrogant.)

There are no words I can write that will do justice to Malaysians. You have to see it for yourself: https://youtu.be/Hd4Bl_Bn6Bs

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 4:39 am I think left vs right explains almost none of the current situation. There are some tankies who think that China and even Russia are still communist. Well, no, they're not, they're capitalist, just with a strong authoritarian state. Arguably the Chinese are "the most prominent capitalists in the world"; it's one of the few places in the world where capitalism works-- e.g., by having so much capitalist competition that corporate profits are low. (See my review of Breakneck.) But I suppose it'll be a generation before the world realizes it.

It depends on how you define capitalism. China's government does exert a lot of control over its economy. So much so that investors consider the Chinese stock market to be a casino dictated by the changing moods of the government. Sadly, China uses this power for national interests, not popular welfare. They say so explicitly. This is closer to a fascist state than anything leftists have wanted. They even study fascist theorists like Carl Schmitt.

I think a common mistake intellectuals fall into is overestimating how much humans agree with their ideas. There are significant numbers of Chinese who preferred living under Maoism than to have been lifted out of poverty. Despite how ridiculous this sounds to people who accept mainstream narratives, these people have reasons for this preference: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gVOeGd ... sp=sharing Societies are extremely divided entities. No matter how much you suck, there will probably be some group that benefits from your policies.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 6:44 am I think a common mistake intellectuals fall into is overestimating how much humans agree with their ideas. There are significant numbers of Chinese who preferred living under Maoism than to have been lifted out of poverty. Despite how ridiculous this sounds to people who accept mainstream narratives, these people have reasons for this preference: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gVOeGd ... sp=sharing Societies are extremely divided entities. No matter how much you suck, there will probably be some group that benefits from your policies.

There's an interesting effect going on here; no one rules alone. I wish you wrote out why they preferred Maoism (to be honest, it might just be nostalgia), but the fact key people benefited from his presence is a good reason why he ruled as long as he did.

I don't particularly agree with CGPGrey's politics, but his video "Rules For Rulers" is mandatory for anyone looking to understand the big picture. It's the kind of video i think everyone should watch. The big caveat is it applies to a capitalist world only, but that's a footnote considering that's the world we have.

The key thing, though, is that it is really the people who came after Mao, such as Deng Xiaoping, who can really be credited for lifting much of the Chinese population out of poverty (remember that Mao presided over the Great Leap Forward and everything that entailed). Of course, if one ignores the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China under Mao was an improvement over China before him, but that is not saying much considering how China was before the Communists took power.

Starbeam wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 10:38 am There's an interesting effect going on here; no one rules alone. I wish you wrote out why they preferred Maoism (to be honest, it might just be nostalgia)

That's the standard line: Listen to the people except when they disagree with you. In that case, it's nostalgia. Isn't the liberal defense of religion also nostalgia? Why isn't that delegitimized for that reason?

Starbeam wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 10:38 am , but the fact key people benefited from his presence is a good reason why he ruled as long as he did.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 11:55 am The key thing, though, is that it is really the people who came after Mao, such as Deng Xiaoping, who can really be credited for lifting much of the Chinese population out of poverty (remember that Mao presided over the Great Leap Forward and everything that entailed). Of course, if one ignores the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China under Mao was an improvement over China before him, but that is not saying much considering how China was before the Communists took power.

It is precisely the lifting up out of poverty that large numbers of Chinese hate about the post-Mao era. The book claims that in order to lift the people out of poverty, programs intended to improve the lives of the rural poor were rolled back after Mao. The book contains details. It says there was some improvement in science, the economy and gender relations during the Cultural Revolution, some of which was reversed during the era of prosperity. It also says some of the most prominent violence during the Cultural Revolution was done by the people whom Mao wanted to teach a lesson by implementing the Cultural Revolution.

The book doesn't claim to be pro-Mao: "I myself was put under house arrest when I was only a teenager and had to face struggle sessions every night for two weeks for what now seem ridiculous reasons. My whole family was affected as a result (Gao 1999a)."

The book is also pro-tradition in a way that disgusts me. Although it could be evoking disgust intentionally as a tactic to vindicate Mao's anti-traditionalism.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 11:55 am The key thing, though, is that it is really the people who came after Mao, such as Deng Xiaoping, who can really be credited for lifting much of the Chinese population out of poverty (remember that Mao presided over the Great Leap Forward and everything that entailed). Of course, if one ignores the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China under Mao was an improvement over China before him, but that is not saying much considering how China was before the Communists took power.

this is indeed true. often it is claimed that it was xiaoping's reforms that made things better, but if this is to be believed https://www.statista.com/statistics/104 ... -all-time/ then the great leap forwards was a cessation of an otherwise continuous process of improvement in living conditions that starts around the start of the chinese revolution.

I'm leaning more and more to life expectancy as a metric of welfare, as opposed to measures based on units of currency like the poverty line. it's simpler and quite direct, and sort of collects info from all sorts of different things such as stress, quality of diet, healthcare and so on and so on: all sorts of bad things affect your life expectancy. the goal, after all, is not to have many units of currency going around, but rather for the world to be the sort of place humans can do well at.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2026 4:39 am I think left vs right explains almost none of the current situation. There are some tankies who think that China and even Russia are still communist. Well, no, they're not, they're capitalist, just with a strong authoritarian state. Arguably the Chinese are "the most prominent capitalists in the world"; it's one of the few places in the world where capitalism works-- e.g., by having so much capitalist competition that corporate profits are low. (See my review of Breakneck.) But I suppose it'll be a generation before the world realizes it.

soo... low corporate profits are a sign of capitalism, the system where the operating principle is maximizing corporate profits?

anyway, i disagree. china isn't (and few people claim that it is) a country that has achieved full communism in the sense of a stateless classless moneyless society blabla, but it still has a lot of remarkable differences with what we generally mean by "a capitalist country". a few are

a quarter of the GDP, half of market cap, a bit under a third of corporate profits and something like a tenth of employment is directly state-owned companies. sure, you can call that state capitalism if you want, but the same can be said about the soviet union. also, there's a lot of coops. sure, there's a big private sector as well, but hey.

even in fully private companies, the party has a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of power. ownership is a legal fiction, after all, so power is at least also a consideration: all companies over a certain size, as i understand it, have a literal office of the party, party representatives on the board, and a whole set of bureaucratic procedures through which the party can say "no, the company isn't going to do A, it's going to do B!"

the ruling party is officially the communist party of china. they say they're trying to do communism, study communism in uni, argue with each other about what to do about this and that using communist arguments, and so on.

they have five year plans, and they're not dead letter either: private companies, and SOEs of course, are accountable for fulfilling it. the CPC says "yo guys we're gonna develop renewables" and the chinese economy, in fact, develops renewables. they CPC says "yo, its time for trains" and, in fact, the chinese build trains.

the banks are neither owned by private individuals, foreign interest, nor ran by independent technocrats: instead, they are governed by the communist party. they don't run on maximization of profits, not solely at least, but also they explicitly funnel resources into areas deemed strategic by the party, as per party directives, five year plans and so on

land is not privately owned. its either owned by rural councils or by the state. sure, you can buy a 99 year lease, but that's different from ownership ownership.

healthcare is mostly provided by the state, there's basic guaranteed income, and businesses have been increasingly mandated to run worker's congresses that, i hear, do exert significant power over the way businesses are ran. not all businesses have em, but SOEs do, and companies over 300 employees are required to have worker's representatives on boards.

altogether i'd call it a country trying to do socialism, with limited but significant success.