Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

No, obviously not. We can disagree on all kinds of things. What we can't disagree on are facts and figures and historical lessons learned about walking certain paths.

If we fail to learn from the past we will repeat it endlessly and I really could do without a repeat of the path that we are currently on. But who knows, maybe the world just needs it's population reset every half century or so, we're overdue.

With the kind of bull-in-a-China-shop behavior on display at the moment it's a toss-up how this will end but war is definitely on the menu.

View on HN

The sort of facts-and-figures type of Democrat doesn't realize that politics is not the same thing as the technocratic administration of society.

Politics is not an optimization problem, it's not about finding the "optimal" state of affairs or whatever.

It's about hopes and dreams. It forms the horizon of the destiny people imagine for themselves, both individually and collectively.

It's also about virtue, morality, sacrifice, etc.

You may sneer but the masses do not.

This is why Democrats lose. They have no vision. What they offer right now is the same boring, stagnant, soul-less status quo, guided along by accurate reasoning about facts and figures.

> This is why Democrats lose.

This is not about winning or losing elections. This is about winning or losing (big time) as a country in the future.

Rapid change is invariably bad, steady, slow changes and growth are good. The long view is the one to take, even if it can't be compressed down into juicy soundbites and isn't sexy.

See, if you 'win' but end up wrecking your country then you lost anyway, 'boring' in politics is good.

There is a reason that 'may you live in interesting times' is generally considered to be a curse, not a blessing.

We can disagree on the historical lessons. I wonder, right now, which historical lesson you are referring to? If you mean Nazi Germany, my opinion is that there aren't actually that many parallels. Or do you mean cases when cultures were eradicated by invaders (real Collapse for some examples, or look at the history of the USA)? Or maybe the cases where Muslims took power, like the Iranian revolution?

The fall of Rome comes to mind.

Divide and conquer is a fantastic strategy against a stronger opponent and Putin is playing this like a master.

Maybe America's time has run out, but I for one would like to see the USA remain strong and united, I fear this may already past the point of no return and with ever day that goes by and this madness continuous you'll be looking wistfully back at those 'terrible' years under Obama, Bush, Clinton and so on.

And in a way that is the most vexing of all this: Trump is lying through his teeth to get those votes, he will not be able to give his voters what he wants but in the meantime the clock is going backwards at a rate of about 4 years per week that this guy is in power.

America's signature under a treaty (always a dicey thing) is now worth absolutely nothing, international relations are damaged for years to come, re-armament will be on the agenda in lots of places that were better off without the ability to slaughter their neighbors and so on. Think of it as the roll-back of 50 years of diplomatic policy that kept a large chunk of the world - the USA included - stable and prosperous.

I thought historians are still debating what caused the fall of Rome?

I can't really take you serious if you invoke Putin as the supposed mastermind...

International relations: because the countries he temporarily blocked for immigration have previously been such big friends to the USA? I don't think that accurately reflects reality.

> I can't really take you serious if you invoke Putin as the supposed mastermind...

Between Putin and Assange there are very good reasons to damage America as much as they can get away with and it didn't take much to tip the balance. America has never been as divided in recent memory as what is happening today.

To think that Putin would not be involved is naive, what with the situation in the Ukraine being what it is he desperately needs some way to get out of the stalemate and with America run by the likes of McCain and Clinton and NATO and the EU being strong and united there would be very little chance of that.

Putin stands the most to gain from all this by far.

> International relations: because the countries he temporarily blocked for immigration have previously been such big friends to the USA? I don't think that accurately reflects reality.

You must have missed his comments on Taiwan, Mexico and a whole bunch of other countries.

If Putin can control the US from his third world backwater, maybe he deserves to be in power. What makes him so good that the world's most advanced country is powerless against him? Is it because Russians are such good hackers?

Taiwan, Mexico and so on - fair enough. But overall it is not as if all the countries in the world were friends and only Trump is shaking things up now. There were always conflicts of interest, new trends that shift power (like oil and phracking), military interventions and what not.

> If Putin can control the US from his third world backwater, maybe he deserves to be in power.

Destruction and construction are asymmetric. It takes far less effort to destroy something than it does to create something and things that are delicately balanced can be toppled with only a small application of force.

> What makes him so good that the world's most advanced country is powerless against him?

Internal divisions, magnified to make them seem larger than they really are.

> Is it because Russians are such good hackers?

No, it is because when it comes to propaganda Russia has a leg (or rather several legs) up compared to the USA. The USA would do something like 'voice of America', the Russians would carpet bomb the nation with their version of the story, a history to corroborate their version and a continuous barrage of flak to get in the way of intelligent discussion.

And anybody that managed to get some kind of opposition going would as a rule never be heard from again.

Fortunately in America that stage has not yet been reached, let's hope it will never happen.

> Taiwan, Mexico and so on - fair enough.

> But overall it is not as if all the countries in the world were friends and only Trump is shaking things up now.

No, but they weren't all-out enemies either and Trump is pushing in that direction (not Taiwan). Even in Europe, one of the USA's staunchest allies when it comes to operations abroad there is strong talk of distancing because of the new perceived instability of America.

> There were always conflicts of interest, new trends that shift power (like oil and phracking), military interventions and what not.

Yes, but just like Hitler found out: you can't fight wars on all fronts at once.

"the Russians would carpet bomb the nation with their version of the story"

But how can they carpet bomb the US with fake news from Russia?

"Even in Europe"

Maybe Europe will have to shake off its arrogance and realize how much they have always depended on the US. I say that as an European - and here, also, people are divided over Trump, just as in the US. There are elections in Germany this year (if you meant Germany), although to be fair, no major shakeup is to be expected. But that is only for lack of an alternative, there is no Trump here to vote for. But maybe some adjustment of policies will occur before the election date, anyway.

"Yes, but just like Hitler found out: you can't fight wars on all fronts at once."

Still, making a tactical error is not in itself evil. And chaos is a tactic that sometimes works. It won him the election already.

> But how can they carpet bomb the US with fake news from Russia?

Thousands of websites are targeted at the US with fake news skewing the picture and messing with people's heads.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281

https://www.rt.com/

On top of that most news fora are overrun by trolls shouting down any kind of dissent and picking up a fair share of support from 'useful idiots' who will endlessly repeat the talking points.

Make no mistake: a war is in progress, it is a war without bullets but with bits, the consequences are every bit as real and sooner or later the one may lead to the other.

> Maybe Europe will have to shake off its arrogance and realize how much they have always depended on the US.

There is no other choice. But that also carries significant risk.

> Still, making a tactical error is not in itself evil. And chaos is a tactic that sometimes works. It won him the election already.

Yes but that's like congratulating the dog on catching the car.

Putins information war: number of web sites or fake social media accounts does not imply lots of people are reading them. In any case, Trump and Hillary wanted to win - all the strategies of the Russians would have been open to Hillary and Trump, too. Why should Putin be better able to employ them?

War - everybody has some interest to pursue, sure. That is nothing new, though.

Europe on its own: what risk do you mean?

"congratulating the dog on catching the car"

Becoming president seems more useful than a car is for a dog, though.

Edit: only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on...

> only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on...

No, but it's but a small wheel in the much larger machine. There has been plenty of reporting on the Russian propaganda machine, if you're going to reject each and every component out of hand then you'll end up rejecting the conclusion as well but that would be a step too far.

See, for this to succeed a number of things have to happen:

- reliable sources of news need to be discredited

- a large amount of flak needs to be generated so people are discussing that rather than the real news

- a consistent barrage of the 'right' talking points needs to be presented so people start repeating those things as though they are real

All of those components are well represented, I would be highly surprised if all this would amount to coincidence.

Most "reliable sources of news" discredited themselves in the last couple of months. And the barrage was pretty onesided, too, wasn't it?

As for the barrage - again, how do you do that? Like creating bots on Twitter and Facebook and zillions of web sites doesn't mean people will read them.

Btw maybe you can explain the Taiwan thing to me? Why is it the obviously good thing to keep supporting China in their policy of claiming it?

Well, in a nutshell:

The 'One China' policy essentially is about saving face. China is extremely sensitive to not being seen as losing face because of bullying from the West about what they consider to be their sphere of influence.

That in practice Taiwan acts and to all intents and purposes is an independent country doesn't matter as much as being able to claim that Taiwan is a republic of China does.

So, if everybody would just pretend that the 'One China' view is the correct one while Taiwan gets away with being a relatively progressive democratic society everybody wins.

If Trump starts throwing his weight around he might just trigger an invasion of Taiwan and just like Europe and the USA stood by while the Eastern part of Ukraine was annexed I do not expect anybody to lift a finger to stop it.

That's why you don't put unstable bullies in charge of foreign diplomacy with your single largest trading partner and a formidable military power to boot.

Vastly oversimplified but that's about the gist of it as far as I can see, corrections welcome.

Sure, but that to me sounds like a technical argument, not a political one (that is, it is neither Republican or Democratic, for example). It is not really a moral argument.

And it might not be the only possible scenario - in fact, with all the Hitler comparisons floating around, this stance towards China reminds me a lot of the appeasement politics towards Hitler.

Ultimately, saving face with regard to Taiwan is probably just one part of the general trade deal with China? So as the other parts, it should probably be up for negotiation? Or even be a factor ("we pretend Taiwan belong to you, and you give us moar iPhones").

Not saying that protectionism is a good idea, but also not saying that all trade deals are always optimal for both parties.

I think Ukraine was about more than saving face for Russia, too - Russia has always wanted the Krim for strategical reasons?

> ("we pretend Taiwan belong to you, and you give us moar iPhones")

That's pretty much the way it was. Except for it being a lot more than just iPhones.

> I think Ukraine was about more than saving face for Russia, too - Russia has always wanted the Krim for strategical reasons?

The Krim is extremely important from a military perspective to Russia, their response was - again - extremely predictable (in fact, I'm surprised they didn't simply call the EU's bluff and invaded outright but then again, appearances matter even to the Kremlin).