On the Nature of Things | Forum

Looks like Bolsonaro is starting out very on-brand. Hours after taking office, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has launched an assault on environmental and Amazon protections with an executive order transferring the regulation and creation of new indigenous reserves to the agriculture minist...

Its bizarre to me how obsessed these various conspiracy theories are with Obama and the Clintons. Absent some truly fantastical alternate reality scenario, wouldn't in make more sense to focus on the actual people in power opposing Trump? That gives you over half the House and half the Senate to wor...

The current label-ism where everybody calls everybody a racist, a Nazi, supremacist has pretty much eroded these words to nothing more than "you are a dangerous durian" of sorts. Instead and in the future it will be more and more those with money and political power versus the masses that...

So you could argue that more often than not these are conventional political questions - who gets what, how we divide up resources and responsibilities - that end up getting framed in racial terms. I feel like the majority of people framing things in racial terms aren't themselves true believers, bu...

Do any of you posting in this thread really believe, deep down, that there is a fundamental difference between, say, a white person and a black person? In any meaningful sense? Because I'm just curious whether the debate is really about the political-cultural groups that have seized on the concept ...

I think identity based on social class, economic status and type of employment is often relevant, but it is too crass for most social manipulators to pull on those handles visably. I think this a s type of grouping that is routinely exploited by politicians. You work, you pay your taxes, and you ar...

This reminds me of a medieval European/Islamic take on Platonism. (Not my specialty so I may be mangling this). Everything has matter and form, but it can have a number of forms simultaneously and in succession. Its sort of the same thing for citizens, who belong first to their family, then their vi...

While I think these identities are social constructs, I would point out that they aren't always constructed by the groups in question for their own benefit, and are just as often applied externally for the benefit of others. "You belong to group X, therefore I can own you/kill you/take your pro...

Do any of you posting in this thread really believe, deep down, that there is a fundamental difference between, say, a white person and a black person? In any meaningful sense? Because I'm just curious whether the debate is really about the political-cultural groups that have seized on the concept o...

West Germany VS East Germany. Seems to me like there is still a big difference between the two thirty years after the reunification. There is a difference, but less than there was in 1988. dead true you can never go backwards, only forwards. I was mainly musing on what modernity actually is - how p...

I'm of the view that you can never go back to a traditional society, by definition. You can only create a third thing that's neither modern nor traditional, and the results we are seeing today of other groups that have tried to do so are pretty horrific. But skillfully invoking their shared history ...

The current South Korean administration, Moon in particular, is what's really driving the progress here. The bonkers summit was just an excuse for Kim and Trump to back down on their bonkers rhetoric, and as such I consider it a huge success. Aside from that, Moon has negotiated some real joint ente...

No I don't wonder about any of that. I wonder why you think the border will be secured. What would a secure border look like? I strongly doubt there will ever be enough political consensus to accomplish what you're imagining, but exactly what are you imagining? At this point anything seems preferab...

watching many of the anti war leftists spin the need for permanent war has been fascinating. Militarism is the only issue on which there is a bipartisan consensus. Only the fringe left and certain parts of the fringe right are opposed to endless foreign wars and increased military spending. Hard to...

ive never really sat down and dug through the detail but the creation of "white people" instead of a squabbling group of germans, english, irish, frenchies and so forth required a decent level of cultural self destruction. the precise details of this are the entire argument... christian? ...

That Jewish boy who plans to buy a gun may want to consider moving to Japan. Homicide by gun stats in Japan Recall reading somewhere that Jewish - Asian marriages are quite common in the USA, a main source of Jewish assimilation. Based on my research (Zatoichi films) there is an awful lot of violen...

France Has Neither Nationalism nor Patriotism - David P. Goldman Been a while immersing myself in DPGs meanderings. A good old Spenglerian mix of facts and fiction with the ever returning theme: Euro-crypto-pagans, please don't try emulate the Chosen People! The inner pagan-beast will always take o...

Bad news for one of the UK vloggers in defense of Western Civilzation. The account of British conspiracy theorist YouTuber Carl Benjamin, better known as Sargon of Akkad, was removed Thursday. This followed the removal in August of U.S. far-right political commentator James Allsup. The ban will be a...

I think you mean Finland on universal basic income, as Norway has never tried it. I didn't know either of them had tried it. I was just indiscriminately listing some progressive/social democrat programs, implemented or proposed. Mussolini used the capitalist classes rather than sweep them aside for...

Why are the antifa people and the alt-right/neo-nazi people fighting then? Why do Catholics and protestants fight in places like Norther Ireland? I understand what you mean, but when you think about it that's also a very good question. What you label as socialists have done the same in killing and ...

However you feel about the desirability of having these migrants enter your country, I think you would agree there is no need to do this: Last Wednesday, a nonprofit group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants in the Arizona desert released a lengthy report alleging Border Patrol agents were in...

Why are the antifa people and the alt-right/neo-nazi people fighting then? What you label as socialists have done the same in killing and even surpassed the Nazi themselves. Communists had a longer run, stands to reason they would rack up a more atrocious score. Hard to imagine fascists doing any le...

I'm inclined to agree with Houellebecq ( :shock: ) on at least one point: Switzerland is the most democratic country on Earth. It hasn't created the most dynamic and exciting culture, but it seems like a nice place to retire. And there isn't as much anti-government street violence. Is Hungary on the...

HP might have been over the top in his cultural chauvinism, but philosophically I don't see a conflict in arguing that Persian civilization was one of the greatest in history , but that it might presently be better to live in Vancouver than Fars. HP was fun. Like all group identity adherents, he ge...

Rather, some cultures have contributed more to civilization than others. Sounds like those cultures doing all the heavy lifting deserve a pass on anything disagreeable they might have done at the same time they were doing all of that valuable inventing. Maybe if you belong to a second-rate culture ...