Trump

[Little stoned kiwi]

Obvious, but kind of sad. People don't hold ideals and principles to be greater than themselves. Principles are what you stick to when it's difficult.

[Harlequin]

Obvious, but kind of sad. People don't hold ideals and principles to be greater than themselves. Principles are what you stick to when it's difficult.

To quote what is often attributed to Marx:

These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.

[KlaxonCow]

Unfortunately, the logic is that you can either raise yourself up or you can keep someone else down.

As the mental measurement is a relative one, both can work to make you feel better about yourself - either way, you are "higher" than the other, so you can feel awesome about yourself.

But the former is very hard, and the latter is far too easy, when you have a marginalised group or two to pick on.

So guess what most humans tend to go for? Yes, "the path of least resistance".

But what I find deeply interesting here is the "zero sum" involved in the mental calculations. The marginalised group can cease to be marginalised, without you or your group replacing them. We could just, like, not marginalise anyone.

Indeed, that would be a proper democracy. Equal justice for all. Fair representation for everyone. Aren't those things kind of the whole point here?

So, my more cynical suspicion here is that we're not really talking about the marginalised group doing better - as that's honestly not a problem, if it doesn't entail you doing any worse by it - but it's more that some folks need the marginalised groups to be there, upon which to base their feelings of superiority against.

You keep some poor people in a box. And whenever you're feeling down, open the "poor people box", look inside the box and think "well, thank fuck I'm not them, eh?". Close the box again and carry on with your existence.

Which is why I like the principle that Abe Lincoln once said: "As I would not be a slave, so I shall not be a master - whatever differs from this, to the extent of that difference, is no democracy".

In the master / slave relationship, there's two parties. We cannot get rid of slaves, unless we get rid of slave masters too. If the slave master exists, then the slaves must necessarily exist for the slave master to be a master of them.

It is not enough to cry for your own freedom, you must respect the cries of freedom from others too. Or, you know, shoe on the other foot, your own cries of freedom become meaningless, if everyone else is ignoring them, just as your ignoring those of everyone else.

If we all say to ourselves "I shall not be a master" than there shall be no slaves. If we all say to ourselves "I'm going to raise myself up" then we can all feel better about ourselves, without anyone else having to be shat upon to make you feel good. If we all say to ourselves "I shall not marginalise anyone" then we finally genuinely get our "equal justice for all".

When we're children, we're dependent on our parents. Then, as adults, we become independent.

I say that there's another level again - to go from independence to interdependence. Where independent people work together - choose to depend on each other - and do a better job together, than they could ever do apart. Creating a new family unit to pass this all on to the next generation of children.

Society seems to have gotten to "level 2". It needs to learn the greater value of progressing to "level 3", as it tends to not quite get that far.

[Harlequin]

Unfortunately, the logic is that you can either raise yourself up or you can keep someone else down.
As the mental measurement is a relative one, both can work to make you feel better about yourself - either way, you are "higher" than the other, so you can feel awesome about yourself.
…
If we all say to ourselves "I shall not be a master" than there shall be no slaves. If we all say to ourselves "I'm going to raise myself up" then we can all feel better about ourselves, without anyone else having to be shat upon to make you feel good. …

That feeling good, however, would still seem to be founded on thinking of oneself as being "higher" than other people.

[PFVA]

It seems the Summit is back on for June 12th.

That is if no one changes their mind again between now and then.

[F-ZeroOne]

For once, the administration does the right thing:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44390737

And then...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44390112

Considering how North Korea reacted to comments made by Mike Pence I imagine this is going to go down well.

[everklear]

The politics of that country have become a garbage fire to which I am having a harder and harder time paying any attention.

[Cloudane]

Rapidly becoming an enemy of the world it seems, as far as trade goes

[F-ZeroOne]

Yeah, I'm beginning to think the advice being given to other nations diplomats now is "Just assume the big orange manbaby is going to flounce out of everything, and instead make a deal with a grown-up."

[Little stoned kiwi]

Giuliani Says Kim Jong-Un Begged Like A Has-Been-Politician-Turned-Hack-Attorney Trying To Get A Job At The White House

[PFVA]

The White House also confirms that President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will hold a one-on-one meeting, with only translators present.

Now... That worries me.

QQuote taken from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44439700

[Cloudane]

With a bit of luck they'll have both arranged assassinations of each other and the world will settle down a bit.


However I find the most likely outcome to be the best of deals with a really smart man, really smart, followed by a tweet 5 minutes later saying he's ripping it up.

[KlaxonCow]

Chairman Kim is fucked.

His nuclear programme is under a collapsed mountain.

Probably many of his nuclear scientists were there when it happened - I mean, it's not unreasonable to expect that the nuclear scientists were in the nuclear facility, doing their jobs - and something else to consider is that a collapsed mountain likely breaches nuclear containment protocols, so it's entirely possible that the facility is completely unrecoverable. For centuries.

Hence the extremely rapid change of heart.

Barely two months ago, Trump and Kim were threatening Armageddon at one another via Twitter, and North Korea was firing missiles over Japan.

But one mountain collapse later and he's wanting peace and denuclearisation. He offers to decommission his collapsed mountain as an olive branch.

The thing is, though, if I'm right that that collapsed mountain is no minor event and it's literally buried all of his nuclear capabilities and ambitions under tons of rock and rubble, then you can interpret these things as entirely logical.

Why not offer up "decommissioning" of your collapsed mountain? It's fucking useless anyway. And you can get "Brownie points" from pretending that you're making sacrifices for peace. But not really. It's a collapsed mountain. "Decommissioning" it is, indeed, a nice way to disguise what's actually going on. Setting off all those nukes under the mountain caused it to collapse. Surely one needs not point out that when a mountain collapses on top of anything, that anything is basically dead and gone.

And, hey, if you no longer actually have any real nuclear capability anymore, then of course you're happy to see "denuclearisation of the peninsula" because that actually translates to you doing bugger all - the collapsed mountain "de-nuclearised" him already - and your enemies surrendering some of their weapons.

Taken from this perspective, you can see that, in fact, Kim is actually surrendering nothing. He offering to give away that which he hasn't got anymore anyway. And what he's really doing is trying to negotiate his enemies to back down, under this pretence that he's magically become this "great envoy of peace" in the last couple of months.

It's a good strategy. Trump is an egomaniac, so all you've got to offer him is the credit for being this totally awesome and amazing guy who's brought the "World Peace" that no-one else could bring, and Kim can sweet talk him around to something that suits his tyrannical regime.

But, equally, the orange manbaby is completely fucking insane, so fuck knows what'll happen.

[F-ZeroOne]

One interesting idea I saw today is that the nukes weren't developed by North Korea in the first place - that they got them somewhere else, and all the research and development sites were for show, and thus can be sacrificed as a bargaining chip with no repercussions for North Korea. I don't entirely believe it myself - if atomic weapons could be acquired in such a manner, its likely someone else much easier to deal with then North Korea would also have them by now.

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2018/06/p ... -gets.html

[Cloudane]

There were a few theories going around that they were donated by Russia for some reason, or that they at least helped out with development. They did improve rather rapidly in the last couple of years.