Conflict between Palestine and Israel escalates
- Thread starter dreng3
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Suffering and conflict are constants in the world throughout history. And when the suffering ends, that is when the golden age happens. When people die, the survivors reap the rewards, for example after the Black Plague, salary = salary increased throughout Europe, after COVID-19, salary increases for tech and non-tech workers, and after World War 2 a golden age occurred for US white males.
We are overpopulated in the short-term, not in the US, but in countries like China, India, Nigeria, and even Bangladesh. The best US policy should be to increase immigration to grab as many high-value and aggressive people from those countries.
Also, Bush was a neoliberal neoconservative oil man; he was no realist, Realists like my professor Randall Schweller, who was John Mearsheimer's student, were begging him not to invest in China and Asia, and begging him not to invade Iraq.
I guess you can say he was a personal realist like most Americans and me who care about their in-group as he earns money from defense contracts.
Also, if the US didn't have the biggest stick, the trade routes would get picked apart by rent-seeking toll collectors. "The spice must flow," so to speak.
None of these things were 'golden ages'; merely somewhat improved situations for the survivors of catastrophe, not even close to compensating for the unimaginable suffering endured. And none of these events were the outcome of political realism, either. I'm sorry, but this is waffle.
Not least because the media and academia are full of people who are paid to associate 'realism' with enriching the Boeings and RTXs of this world. And flattering the sensitivities of racists.
Really, because no one in my family dies from COVID. We aren't fat or old. But my friends, family, and I got increased benefits from it. I got an economics degree remotely from OSU, my parents got raises, and my friends all got raises. Heck, none of my older family members even died.
Power comes from labor power for workers, true, but the other way is simply to not die when massive casualty events like climate change or outbreaks occur.
The more there is of some thing, the less valuable it is almost every single time. Look at how the world treats Indians of all nationalities online, everyone hates them to an insane degree, and it used to be this way for us Chinese until China had fewer people, Despite China being more against US interests, India is somehow more hated online by everyone(even by so-called progressives who are just class realists). Granted, I am not a fan of the one-child policy, but mainly because it affected me if it didn't affect me, I wouldn't care. Also, the reason I hate Xi and the Maoist in charge was that my family on my mom's side were wealthy land owners, and Mao took our shit but didn't kill my grandmother(his mistake) even during the cultural revolution. I am still going to get my revenge on China someday somehow, and yes the 1931 great depression too took a toll.
I will always be a realist(of both socioeconomic class, nation, and political party) even when I pretend to care, and I hate whenever I do care.
Also, note I like the US because the US is a superpower that is agile and aggressive... and where I can shit on people online. It's my only loyalty, and why I am a failed realist for it.
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Well, also because the relentless pursuit of hegemony over others usually involves military buildup, which (in today's hegemons, like the US) is tied up in a military-industrial complex. And political realism spends little of its focus on internal reform.
So in short: "I got mine, fuck everyone else who suffered (including quite a few people on this forum), it's good it happened 'cos it benefitted me"?
you seem to be mushing together descriptive and normative political realism. i guess i wasn't differentiating between the two either. the idea that maximizing power is the dominant motivation in international relations as they currently are, and any country whose leadership thinks otherwise is in danger of being taken advantage of is different from the idea that maximizing power should be the dominant motivation in this context, and that in turn is different from the idea that maximizing power should be the dominant motivation in any context. The first of those is descriptive, the second and third are two different normative positions.
in any case, imperial overreach and security dilemmas are both things, so 'relentless pursuit of hegemony' in the sense of military build up might not be in the actual interest even of hegemons, and having a population that is scared of random middle eastern countries for no good reason also isn't particularly healthy: it is that population from which is drawn the so-called 'leaders' who seem at least to manage the trivial details of international relations-- and from such trivial details can arise important events. It is difficult to imagine how rampant unjustified paranoia would be adaptive for a nation as a whole if it actually guides decisions in international affairs; why would humans even have brains if arbitrary delusion makes them better off? the benefits to a ruling class of such a phenomenon in the ruled population are obvious, of course; "divide and rule" is an aphorism that has been around for thousands of years. The phenomenon is particularly profitable for the vampires that hold shares in weapons manufacturing companies. But apart from that, a country starts to look like Israel now looks. Or apartheid South Africa. It's not a good look and it leads to much death and very well might mean the end of the country as its people know it. While realists will (famously in the case of Macchiavelli) tend to rate being feared as more useful than being loved, that does not mean it is a good thing to generate hostility towards oneself. Too high a tolerance for odium can be unstable.
These considerations are brushed aside by those whose 'realism' is just thin advocacy for enriching weapons manufacturers and provoking hostility (to then justify enriching weapons manufacturers).
The task for a descriptive realist who is also a hesitant normative realist is to think on how to change the system of international relations such that it is no longer dominated by countries seeking power over each other. Communists have an answer: the workers of the world rise up and take power for themselves-- a realist idea if ever there was one. Realism to end realism.
Republicans and Democrats are falling over themselves to make sure that won't be necessary.
I'm primarily talking about normative political realism. Mearsheimer's writing may mostly be descriptive, but it's also led him directly to proscriptive conclusions about what the US must do (eg, in the containment of China).
And sure, these are often dressed up as descriptive too-- but while "In order for America to accomplish X, it must do Y, and X is the only rational thing for America to want to accomplish" might be descriptive and detached, it's also functionally identical to "America should do Y".
Sure. But to an Offensive Realist, the sole reason to avoid dominating your neighbour is the risk of failing or the cost to oneself. And there are more than a few instances in which those factors aren't going to outweigh the material, territorial, or military gain-- especially for the biggest players, which are the only ones whose decision-making the Offensive Realists tend to care about. It's times like that when an international rules-based system, democratic accountability, or simple ethics should play a role. But again, Mearsheimer has been generally dismissive about all three.
That'd be nice. But it's also about the exact opposite of what's envisioned by political realists like Mearsheimer: his is inextricably, fundamentally bound to countries seeking power over one another. The formulation was created specifically to explain (and guide) those interactions, and its end goal is not the system's dismantlement, but rather winning the game at the cost of smaller countries' self-determination.
If true then
A. Hope it’s really quick
B. Wish we could’ve seen if GTA6 would’ve ever lived up to the hype
This thread seems to vindicate that point of view-- as a matter of description.
