Most wrong and absolutely wrongest

So let's go into it :

The most important event of 2013 was the change in the relationship between the U.S. and Iran (through the nuclear talks).

The way this device works (in the hands of boysⁱ), we infer at this point that the guy's some sort of Middle East afficionado (which he probably represents as "expertise", but hey - by the looks of the field the last bona fide expert in Middle East affairs died cca 1980). Which... you know, whatever, kid wants to know all about astronauts, or dinosaurs, or whatever the Hollywood gang thought they could make the best selling toys that decade.

I have always said that a new kind of civil society has emerged in Iran, so there is nothing new as far as that country is concerned. The new American policy is a dramatic shift.

As a point of instruction, it's a bad idea to say "I have always...", exactly in the way and exactly for the reasons it's a bad idea to say "You always...". The two are in no way distinct, nothing more than a little counterproductive dead weight. The sooner you get rid of it, the better.

That aside, it is in fact true some strange is coming out of Iran. If you know nobody that lives there, you may perhaps intuit what's going on through the watery reflection of stuff like A Separationⁱⁱ.

Then again this is neither surprising nor notable to people with any understanding in the field, or at least a modicum of life experience : societies develop strangely in lasting totalitarian regimes, but the apparent strange does not survive eighteen months after the fall. Romanian society was strange all through the seventies and eighties, and most of the strange was gone by 1992. In short, pouring water into a complicated glass apparatus with numerous tubes and tubules does not make "a new, strange sort of water"ⁱⁱⁱ. Moreover, once someone with a hammer crashes your apparatus, the "new, strange" water immediately reforms the usual puddle right on the corresponding spot on the floor. So much for all your dreams, hopes and aspirations, huh.

But anyway, yes, the new US policy^iv is a dramatic shift. Like at some point they supported the sultan or whatever it was, the Pehlavi guy^v. Then the islamists kicked him out, and the US was butthurt for a while. Now it's getting used to it. A dramatic shift, sure, but nothing unexpected, it's quite how politics work : first they declare the new development intolerable and try to get rid of it. Then, if they fail for long enough, they just yield. In politics, much like in society, law and anywhere else, possession is nine tenths of the law. Just look at George Bush's presidential term.

My prediction of a decline in American power turned out to be absolutely correct.

Derp.


MY prediction as to how the sun is going to also rise (set to music in the immortal expression "the sun also rises", which some schmucks stole from me long before I wrote it - or long before I was born, for that matter) turned out to be absolutely correct, in retrospect. Each and every day, day in and day out, my anon prediction which isn't really mine turned out to be correct. Which is why I happen to be mentioning it.

Do you see the problems with this ?

But what we are seeing is that this reduction in power is producing, at last, a more reasonable attitude toward the outside world.

It would be nice if people derps and derpettes generally were systematically trained to provide extraordinary evidence when they make extraordinary claims. Because contrary to this nude assertion of nonsense, back on Planet Reality the /span> US is still muddied in a bizarre attitude where it imagines it can, for instance, dictate how banking should be happening in the rest of the world, and then getting really really butthurt when nobody past their 51st state seems to care (and the UK only says it gives a shit, too, if the recent HSBC "prosecution" is anything to go by). Also on Planet Reality, Obama managed to get himself ruefully humiliated by the more intellectually minded Putin over his ultimately failed attempt to matter on the world stage. Reasonable attitude ? Where ? Go into details. Be explicit.

In the days of President George W. Bush, there was something unbearable about the U.S., about the idea that there is just one form of democracy with a specific type of financial capitalism, and that this must be extended all over the world. Perhaps the emergence of a new, more reasonable American foreign policy is important in terms of geopolitical balance. It means the risk of war and the risk of conflict, or hysterical conflict, is lower or nil.

This is a rather outlying estimation to say the least of it. If the opinions of actual experts in global politics and diplomacy are anything to go by, the situation in the field is exactly opposite.

I was not very impressed by the election of Barack Obama as the first black president. I took it as a gimmick.

Strangely enough, the first time around Obama wasn't nearly as gimmicky as the reelection. Plenty of people actually believed in the guy, he seemed intelligent, he seemed educated, he seemed well spoken and in general he seemed more or less the man for the job (much more than McCain at any rate, what with the scary bare teeth lich-grin-of-dementia thing he had going).

Meanwhile of course his education has revealed itself to be a sham - which I suppose is the problem with educations, you can pretend your monkey has read at Oxford for as long as you keep the monkey indoors. Once you send it to play the professor at Oxford... well... let's just say the sham won't last two weeks.

Meanwhile of course his intelligence has revealed itself to be absent, and quite completely so. Meanwhile of course all sorts of negative traits have managed to prove themselves quite unvanquishably present, an inability to focus, a general incapacity to use criticism, a tendency to compensate the body for failures of the mind^vi.

Nevertheless, with all this clearly on the table, the man was re-elected. Now that's gimmickry, whole and complete, as the only reason he was re-elected is that you can't ever reprimand a nigger in the current US.

Yeah, that's it, you've heard me. That's the principal effect of all the anti-racist effort : people may or may not hire a black guy to do their lawn or ran their country, more or less as before 1970. The one thing people will however not do, ever, under any circumstances, is tell the guy that dug up their lawn or run their country smack into the wall that he did a poor job of it. Not if he's black, no way Jose, it just can't be done.

Obviously this is a problem, especially for the poor black guy that doesn't necessarily wish to be a nigger but has absolutely no way or hope of avoiding it. Imagine you were trying to park the car in a difficult spot and asked someone to help you from outside. But they, instead of telling you anything useful, just nodded their head approvingly whatever the fuck you did. Too much to the left ? Nodding and smiling. Too much to the right ? Nodding. Smiling. Headed straight for the propane tank ? Nodding and smiling. You're going to be crashing that car, aren't you ? Well, it sucks when the car in question is your life, and the assholes that fucked you over think they're oh-so-progressive and nice people for it.

So... yeah. If re-electing the worst president in history just because they re-elected the previous worst president in history, and that guy was white and this guy is black so you can't possibly do anything else is not gimmickry, then I'd love to hear what is.

At the time, there was a sort of panic over the financial collapse, and I thought the election was used to trick us into forgetting the incredible financial mess the U.S. produced.

This "politicians trying to divert our attention" trope is by now quite dead, thanks to the inept use by legions of reddit-level experts in matters, whose entire bag of tricks seems to consist of this (and perhaps some cat anecdotes).

Obama's re-election was something different, however. The social security debate in the U.S., such as the one over Obamacare healthcare reform, is something very important to me.

The problem would be the misnomer tradition in the US. For instance, under the guise of reforming healthcare, Obama has principally reformed the electoral and political system there. Never before had a President changed a law by saying so in the entire history of the United States. Now that's reform, and quite fulminant reform at that, but it has nothing to do with healthcare (and perhaps is also unwelcome - it just so happens that whether the US goes to the shitter in a handbasket is not something that's in any way important to me).

Anyway, useful, intelligent, productive people living a life of want and hardship create Republics, their worthless, lazy degenerate sons and daughters living a pampered life of boredom create authoritarian regimes. This is hardly news, or surprising. I personally find it refreshing to see the old rule still holding quite so fast, because if you listen to the progressive gargle you might even start considering they've like... you know man, moved into the next phase or something. Transcended. You know ?

When you start discussing these things, people will tell you, "Look at how the tea party is taking control of the Republican Party." But I know that the tea party receives most of its support from Americans over 60, the aging generation.

Well, the problem with this "I know" would be that it actually means "I've been told and I swallowed it whole". There's nothing wrong with that per se, in many cases it's a lot more convenient to do this than actually look at the field, especially in fields you couldn't care less about. The problem however is that the guy is not aware that he's sprouting as his own knowledge something he's just picked up from soundbites and manufactured social proof. He actually thinks that he knows this as a fact, on the grounds of having heard it said a lot. Now that, my friends, is a very serious problem, in that it belies a broken, leaking brain system. Trying to think with such a head is not unlike trying to be an athlete with a aortic insufficiency. It just ain't happening, you know ?

Perhaps the U.S. is again turning into something different. Perhaps we are on the verge of a new phase where America tries to think again in terms of equality. I have no conclusion, but one must not miss the turning points in history.

Herp. What is it with idiots and equality these days, anyway ? It's almost like the 1800s are back and "godfearing" was replaced with "equalitarian".

It is obvious we need the U.S. and the American imperial system.

This is a good point to recall the first footnote of this article to mind. What the man says is that... well... he wants his daddy. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that.

The period from 1945 to perhaps 1980 was good for the "free world" when there was the Soviet threat. But after the Cold War, the U.S. was losing industrial might and tended to compensate by using military action. This produced negative reactions everywhere and produced the defeat or disaster in Iraq in the George W. Bush era.

Again with the regurgitated soundbytes. I wonder if the afficionado crowd realises at all about how obvious their cluelessness is, in fact ?

Anyway, the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq, in that order, are a product of Obama and Bush, in that order. Do the math, count the numbers, add up money and body bags, see the results. It's not a very close contest, not really.

When Bush was in power, Americans became -- by pretending to be so militarily powerful -- completely repulsive. But as soon as they admit that their power is waning, people on the periphery of the empire can start worrying about a world without the U.S. Army. And what they imagine is not very pleasant. Once the U.S. acknowledges that it is not the ruler of the world, once it acts reasonably, then many, many nations will realize that they need the U.S. This is the paradox.

I am trying to think of any one nation that feels more secure rather than less secure due to the presence of the US army. Obviously it won't be Russia, China, big players like that. It can't possibly be Serbia, Lybia, Syria, Egypt, where US intervention fucked things up, likely permanently. It likely isn't Georgia, where there was no intervention. It's definitely not Israel, but quite on the contrary these days. So... what's left ? Korea and Japan, practically. Well... both these depend on the US militarily, yes, but the thing is... they depend on the US financially even more than that. Even with a strong US military, the collapsing giant is sending Korea into a serious tailspin. Japan has structural problems it had no hope to resolve even if the money kept flowing, and on top of which the worst natural disaster in the history of mankind just hit them recently^vii.

But here's the kicker : Romania, arguably one of the states that most gains from Dept of Defense expenditure as a percent of its GDP, still doesn't give a shit about the US. Not really. So I'd say that when you fail to impress even these rottincullo right here, in spite of putting the shield right over their butt at your own expense... I would say the entire soft dork power theory is a little leaky.

Now, these considerations notwithstanding, of course should the US revert somehow to acting reasonably plenty of nations would be more than happy to hear. The odds of that happening are about as good as the odds of the US legal system starting to make sense somehow, suddenly. The only way it's happening is on the ruins of everything that the US is today. It requires foreign invasion, it requires generalised rape, it requires famine and privation, it requires hopelessness and mute desperation. For decades - perhaps generations. It's not happening tomorrow, and it sure as shit hasn't happened yesterday.

Once the U.S. admits this, the decline in America's hard economic and military power will produce a rise in its soft power.

Gambler's fallacy at its finest.

Many people will tell you these days that China will be the great power after the U.S. I do not belong to that school. No demographer believes in a brilliant or simple future for China, because of its demographics. We have learned that China is going to change its "one-child policy," but it is simply too late. We have no experience of this kind of demographic imbalance in a country of 1.3 billion people. A small country can make adjustments through immigration or emigration, but China is so big that there is no correcting what it has done.

Perhaps this is true. Then again, countries with heavy male load tend to go to war. What are all those extra boys to do ? Not likely they'll find a girl to settle down with, so it's either invading Kansas, space exploration, filling the monasteries, something. Who's to know what they'll pick ? Probably interesting in any case.

China was able to produce a Communist revolution, like Russia did, by strongly promoting equality among all people.

This couldn't be further from the truth. China was able to produce Communist revolution exactly like Russia did : by stealing everyone's everything. The resultant famine was worse in China than it was in Russia (and worse in Russia than in recent Venezuela, say), yet obviously the end point is much lower than it could have been in either case had sanity been observed throughout. Much like in the case of, you know, Rhodesia, yet another place where money was immorally employed to further an imbecile's worldview.

What is happening now in China is a tremendous rise in inequality, more than in other countries. Development through exports of goods and imports of foreign capital, and China's transformation into the "workshop of the world" -- this was very much a decision taken by the oligarchies and capitalist system in the West. The Chinese Communist Party is a little like a rodeo cowboy trying to stay on a bucking horse.

That tremendous rise in inequality strictly mirrors a tremendous rise in wealth and power. As this always works. Hopefully for its sake China continues with its present policies of statally-enforced inequality, because two collapsing giants in the same century is perhaps a little much.

It's generally true that the politicians in every living system are much like a rodeo cowboy trying to stay on a bucking horse. The alternative is a dead horse, and while communist idiots like our expert here imagine it's always better to ride a dead horse than a bucking one, nevertheless, generally people object to the stench, and more importantly people who can actually ride find the perching on corpses at the very least unseemly, but generally insane.

It is quite unpleasant these days for Japan to be so geographically close to China (with the security tensions in the East and South China seas).

You don't say...

I talked about this at a symposium in Kyoto in December 2013.

The notion that someone listened seems quite far fetched.

I said China would use such tensions to ease domestic resentments and difficulties. I would say that, mentally, China seems much closer to the year 1900. You have a mix of basic literacy, economic takeoff and the collapse of traditional religion -- in this case communism. So the Chinese have a tendency to become over excited and therefore develop strong nationalistic attitudes. It would be ridiculous to overestimate China's military ability. If the U.S. and Japan stick together, there ought to be no problem.

To... wait. I will need to re-read that. To overestimate China's military ability ? Yes, it would be ridiculous. In fact, it would be outright impossible. China can bring under arms by Summer more people than the combined population of the US and Japan. What in the world are we talking about ?!

The US knows this, incidentally, given the quite public fellatio US diplomats delivered their Chinese counterparts over the recent straights brouhaha. Expect a lot more of that in the future, the Chinese are very bureaucratically minded, and that means each and every nobody in the apparatus will want some oral attention. To wit :

But let's not... digress.

In the Arab world, we are seeing revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and there is a dramatic problem in Syria. But this is no worse than what we experienced in Europe.

First off, "we" experienced no such thing. Specifically, we experienced no "arab world", no Tunisia, no Egypt, no Syria and by the looks of it no Europe, either. I experienced, Arab world, meaning cooking and cunt and conversation and clair de lune. I experienced Tunisia, and Egypt, meaning the same. And Europe, definitely. Schmuckboy here, however, has not experienced anything at all whatsoever, and his prattle is becoming tiresome.

There's only so much attention you can get on the basis of being China's most retarded sense demolition equality expert, after all.

1. There are specific differences in the ways intellectual males and intellectual females construct their discourse (gender is discussed in this context as an ideal and does not necessarily relate to the person's phenotypic sex). While this is not the place to go into much detail, let it suffice to point out that males tend to construct their communication as a challenge, and so flat out wrong declarative statements do not bother them in the slightest. On the contrary, they are part and parcel of how their speech works. You are not welcome to reject the construction as presented on the grounds of it being nonsensical or factually wrong (doing either is in fact an invitation to violence, even if you're not too likely to meet actually male males these days, willing to actually cash that cheque). You are instead invited to construct the context for the text in such a manner as to keep the declarative statements correct. In this perspective, the introductory "The most important event of 2013 was the change in the relationship between the U.S. and Iran (through the nuclear talks)" simply translates to "The one thing that most interested me in 2013 was Iran".

   Females tend instead to produce much more inclusive discourse, in stark contrast with the made-to-exclude male speech, with the drawback that anything the woman says has to have endless introduction, reference, relation, clarification and so forth. This makes the man click off by the time she's got to her point, which is why you have all the communication problems among genders in daily practice, and all the desperation yielding silly books about how earthlings come from two different, randomly chosen celestial bodies. Nonsense, just look at the way sex works : males are receptive early, females are receptive late. And in closing, allow me to quote Milton :

   Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off!

   It's true, in that it's just another way to state the banal observation that complexity is the result of contrary forces. [↩]

2. Some meh 2011 film from Iran which I was going to write about but in the end couldn't be bothered. Anyway, it's plain watching the thing that the rules of the social environment in which the writers, the director and the public are immersed have few if any point of contacts with anything recognisably Western. Annoyingly, the one most visible point of contact is the misplaced notion that equality among people is either possible, desirable or even moral. The unfortunate Jewish influences in the world, which I suppose is quite ironic in and of itself. [↩]
3. Polywater and its friends lolwithstanding. [↩]
4. Enough with this confusion already, it's unseemly. "America" means Canada, the US and Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, Bolivia plus another dozen or so countries with less than ten million inhabitants each, such as Saint Martin or Saint Barthelemy. Out of this billion people the US is scarcely a third. Out of these 42 million square kilometers, the US is less than a quarter (of which Alaska is in turn a third - you're not about to start calling the whole US "Alaska" now, are you ?). There's no "America" in the sense of "US" any more than there's "Tits and Ass" in the sense of "woman". Can we get with literacy and common sense here ? I know it's hard, especially in English, but make an effort already, it's getting ridiculous. [↩]
5. That name sticks, because pehlivan is how you say trickster in Romanian. Well, one of the many ways, at least. [↩]
6. This is what the fat worthless whale that failed on her date does when she chugs icecream by the bucket : she's compensating the body for the failures of her retarded headthing. Obviously this results in imbalance, as the body did nothing wrong and so needs no compensation, and the head is untouched so the problem will repeat itself. Again, and again, and again. Which is why so many worthless shits are also fat, incidentally. The two are not unrelated variables, all the propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding. [↩]
7. I don't think anyone quite realises the extent of the damage done to Tokyo and Japan generally by the nuclear meltdown. [↩]