Eiuol

There are some senses in which it is true, not that I would even call Russia or the US absolutely imperialistic. But largely the extent in which they are bad is the extent in which they are autocratic and acting intensely with regards to territory. So I agreed with the characterization, because that is the only way I think I can decide on a moral preference. On top of that, if foreign policy is going to be in terms of self interest, any moral preference should be one where I truly think that global and national trends in politics will go the direction I prefer for where I am personally living right now.

I mean, at least you could also address how you think Grames is also wrong.

"Ukraine is contested territory between two empires, the American Empire and the Russian Empire." Basically, I agree with this characterization. Honestly, I don't care much about the Ukraine. I'm not trying to argue that "we need to save the Ukraine!" But I can ask a question like "by taking a position of either Russia or America, which is more in my interest? What could bring me closer to the type of government I want?" Your choice is Russia, not because you want to support the interests of Russia for Russia's sake, but because this is the best way to attack the evils within American government: "The American Empire is a personal threat to me and so I want it thwarted, defeated and even crushed in every project it undertakes." My choice is America, despite the evils I see within. I think the interests of an autocratic regime directly opposes and frustrates any attempts I might have towards making liberty a widespread belief globally and where I am standing. Of course, the way we disagree is exactly what kind of evil there is in the American government. If you're being consistent, when you say American Empire, you should be referring to just about everything since the Spanish-American war. And you find that the evil is just about on every level of Western society. But however in deep far back your dislike of the American "Empire" goes, clearly, you think that supporting the interests of Russia will bring you closer to the kind of world you want. Again, I don't care much for the Ukraine, but I do say that the Russian "Empire" (your words) is against my interests, so crushing every project that it undertakes sounds pretty good to me. I think the American government should have less business in the Ukraine than it does, but since I personally cannot change the course of events, I'm going to pick a side. It is clear where our moral preferences lie.

Well, can you give examples of colonizing behavior that is characterized by reason? I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it seems like an exception as far as world history. It would be good to have an example of "colonialism gone right", but most examples I can think of are disregard of reason.

Just to clarify, since the sentence organization was weird, I'm saying that Grames' position, as stated, is that harm to America is desirable. Although he mentioned not really caring what happens in Russia, but the context of supporting Russia in this case because it directly harms American interests. Quite directly, support is in the context of Russia's actions as deliberately harming Western interests. Not "Russia has a right to defend itself", but "Russia as a country has done good work by attacking the West".

It doesn't mean supporting Russia, but it can. Grames literally said he supports Russia. I stated my preferences as well. Not "I think Russia is right here" but "Russia is in the superior moral position on a global stage regarding just about any issue".

But it did characterize colonialism. When the Spanish interacted with the Aztecs and the Inca, the conquistadors truly only cared about short-term self-interest, didn't care about reason, and were more keen to manipulate native leaders rather than interact with reason. And if anything, the people that colonized South America at that time were quite interested in spreading their brand of collectivism through Christianity. On occasion, there were colonists who did carry with them Enlightenment philosophy. English colonists were a little better, but that's pretty limited to 1650 - 1770. A very mixed bag, with a very large portion of them being something like Calvinists (you know, predestination and the most vociferous views on the inherent depravity of man). I certainly wouldn't celebrate them as a broad category, mostly because they were not really representative of Enlightenment philosophy. And more importantly, any argument about natives being primitive doesn't really apply. I don't think the issue is that Europeans settled in America. In a sense, the natives were better off being introduced to some European ideas, but since this was usually done with violence and force. There were silver linings, sure, but imagine what it would be like if the majority of colonists would have traded. Certainly, the Aztecs and Incas were not paragons of reason, and they were sometimes as brutal as any conquistador, for similar reasons. You could argue that there were various ways that natives were better off (the art was certainly better), but I don't think you could argue rationally that it was okay to initiate force on almost all natives. You might say that it was great that the Europeans killed Montezuma, and made the Aztecs better off politically, but they pretty much just subjugated them in a new way, and in a racist way. In terms of medicine, no, they were not better off, same with agriculture. I should have given a better example. Imagine as a spacefaring civilization we landed on a planet with civilization at the stage of the ancient Greeks. Some of them we might want to call savages, in the way that Sparta was pretty brutal and anti-reason. Others, like Athens, would seem more promising, and be grasping at a better philosophy, but sometimes express collective dictatorship through absolute democracy. You might be right that the historical and philosophical trend of the natives was towards a more intense mysticism. The problem is, so much stuff was deliberately destroyed that we really don't know what their philosophical trends were like. Besides, since these alien Greeks would probably be receptive to the knowledge of more advanced civilizations, there would be no reason to treat them like absolute savages. I think natives were the same way. Often when the natives first encountered Europeans, they were very curious and wanted to show their goods and show the Europeans around. The worldview that many European colonists in North America acted on was an intense Protestant worldview. If anything, most Enlightenment thinkers were in Europe. To the extent that Enlightenment ideas were brought along with colonists, they were the people far less violent with less interest in initiating force, and trying to trade with natives. What you are saying what truly fit fine with saying that "Europeans had a lot to teach, and it's not bad that such ideas might even outright replace the cultural values of natives". I agree with that. I'm pushing back against the idea that Rand had about natives being savages, and being totally okay with violence perpetrated against them on the premise that they were savages.

I wanted to know what you thought. His point is something about the spirit of the country, in the abstract. And I take it to mean approval of the government from administration to administration. I don't care about the Biden administration in particular, nor the Trump administration, but since I still generally support the American government, I care about American interests and want those to be is best off as possible. The same government that Grames refers to as the American Empire, whose interests he wants worse off as possible. But we certainly can't reify a "true America". All you can do is talk about the America that exists concretely, and its general form of government, and realize that another America would be entirely different. I would like such a thing. Even still, I would prefer the so-called American Empire, especially because I don't think supporting Russia would grant me anywhere near closer to the kind of America I would like. Further away in fact. Even if you want to claim that Russia is not a dictatorship, it isn't moving towards democracy or any notion of a more free government. Worst case scenario, the US is moving towards autocracy, but Russia is already there and shows no signs of improvement.

Unfortunately, she was pretty much wrong about the historical facts and the nature of these societies. They were not primitive savages barely more advanced than a Neanderthal, like you could say of tribes in the Amazon. If they were, Rand might have a point. But they weren't. They had some notions of property, just not identical with Europeans. The Aztecs had beautiful cities with better hygiene than any European city. Most Native American cultures had very rich agricultural knowledge. Many had sophisticated knowledge of astronomy. There were rich systems of organization. Of course there were brutalities and disrespect towards individuals and strong notions of collectivism, but the Europeans did this as well. I like to imagine our modern-day society discovering a society like the ancient Greeks from 300 BC. This is actually even a bigger technological and philosophical gap than Europeans had with the Aztecs or Inca. Would it be right to subjugate them for their alleged primitivism, murder them if they were inconvenient, or burn down their houses just to make room for yours? When people talk about colonialism, they don't mean selling down next to someone else and sharing space. They talk about use of force and racism. Yeah, it's great that the British brought great technology to India, but colonialism is the wrong way to do it. You could trade with them, you could have in exchange for mutual benefit, anything like that. It seems like Rand would say "but there is actually nothing you could trade since they are just that primitive". As advanced as we are, if we could trade with the ancient Greeks, we would find plenty of reason to do so.

I wouldn't call her nihilistic, just pessimistic of anything. But I think if you watch it long enough, Wednesday develops in a way that she is being portrayed as a teenager that makes mistakes. I would agree that mentioning the word "patriarchy" kind of detracts from her real point, rolling her eyes at having to be social about things she doesn't care about. Your concern about social justice ideology could make sense, but whatever poorly written one-liners there might be, I think we can judge the overall theme as emphasizing first-hand thinking and doing your own thing. As far as the pilgrims though, I took that more like seeing them as collectivist and racist religionists who want to burn witches at the stake. Which they really were. If anything, it's good that the main villain isn't some generic white guy with no psychological motive behind his actions. He sees other people who don't try to belong to the collective as bad, although this is a little bit derivative from Harry Potter where Voldemort hated anyone who wasn't a pureblood and anyone who didn't desire to be a pureblood. Then again, that trope has been around longer than that even. By the way, you might like the show Sabrina more. Similar themes, and arguably executed better. Oh, I don't think her view is that chaos overtakes reason. She is meticulous about her reasoning all the time, but a premise that she can't trust anyone and she has to out-reason everyone else.

It is the same, because I'm talking about America in the place as it exists right now, not America the place that exists in the unspecified future. He may desire the creation of a new America and would support the interests of that new America. But it is literally impossible to do anything to the interests of a country that doesn't exist. I'm talking about the so-called American Empire. I'm talking about the West as it exists today.

I know what the differences are, so which differences do you think I'm not noticing? How is an autocratic leader legitimate? Still waiting on your opinion about Grames' post about unequivocally supporting Russia and unequivocally standing against American and Western interests (i.e. desires that America and the West be harmed).

What did I fail to discern about them?

I took the statements that Wednesday made about "patriarchy" as more like eye rolling sarcasm and morbid humor that makes people uncomfortable. She never really took it seriously. Well, no, that was about a character who literally was genocidal. The people who were executed or killed were only described as outcasts, they weren't even given an ethnicity. Thematically that was barely even there, except maybe when she rebelled against her mom, a housewife. Wednesday (a teenager who is bound to make many mistakes) learned how to better accept other people pursuing different values than she would. She grew to like Enid a lot, for instance. You are reading into it. I forget her name, but if it was inconsistent with her character or abilities, that would make sense what you say. But she is pretty damn good at everything she does, with the elitist attitude. The conflict here could have been written better, making it clear what this does to Wednesday's character arc, but it certainly doesn't fit in with "token black woman". Part of it was to portray Wednesday as an outcast among outcasts. I think it does a good job at getting at themes of individuality and figuring out problems rationally and carefully, all without the usual or overbearing notions of "I love my collective ethnic identity!" Or "I want to do what I can to fit in!" Whatever you might say about the execution of the plot or characterization, a big focus is on individuality, and as we would expect if individuality is involved in a genuine way, that goes alongside honesty, productivity (Wednesday does things with intention and mentions things like writing for one hour every day), things like that.

There's a difference between public as a collective noun, versus an aggregate or average condition of a region or population. This is only one aspect of vaccines (the chance of dying or severity of illness), but part of the goal is the vast reduction of illness is being spread, in much the same way that sewage systems aren't just for the disposal of garbage, but cleanliness of an environment on a large scale. In the short term, opting into a vaccine is merely a question of you falling ill for 3 days and preventing that, but on a long-term large-scale, opting into a vaccine is a question of your concern about the aggregate or average condition of health and hygiene in your environment. Of course it gets complicated, and it might take a decade even. These things take time. Polio is almost eradicated from the world, and everything prevented by MMR is absolutely a nonissue, not even a thing you talk about. You might not get the absolute elimination of viruses that evolve quickly and rapidly, but you can approach eradication. Given the modern world and modern technology, yes, the common cold could be eliminated one day, except that might require more medical advancement. Flu vaccines. In general, the technology of vaccines is reliable, and although there are new ways of doing vaccines, rational support of vaccines (ie appreciation of science/reason for the development of technology, voluntary cooperation for a common value like health, the application of medicine to improve general flourishing in the world around you) is the way to go.

Me? Because we were only talking about my argument. I'm using it in the egoistic sense, that it would be in your rational self-interest. I don't know why you thought I was talking about publicly owned things. I do believe it is best for me as well. The case I am making to you is the case I make to myself. I said public health, not public good. I suspect the whole issue here is that you misremembered what I said as "public good". Besides, I was talking about how the purpose of vaccines is not only to help prevent you from getting sick, but to eradicate a disease entirely or get as close as possible to that. Eradicating a disease is pretty nice for myself. I imagine eradicating a disease would be pretty nice for you as well. The only way to eradicate a disease is for us to cooperate with vaccines. Health involves a network of people, and cooperation among those people over a long period of time. The wider point is that if you don't want to cooperate, okay, do your thing, but vaccines are the sort of things that people in a rationally self-interested society would want.

The most recent one of his in the thread a page or 2 back. Dictatorship for both of them. But, you haven't made the case for discriminating dictatorship from autocracy. In what ways does autocracy fail to fit in with the criteria that Rand provided? Or even if not all autocracy falls under dictatorship, some autocracies definitely are, like Iran. Mentioning the Russian Constitution doesn't do anything, even the USSR claimed to be democratic, as was shown to you earlier.

Looks like you didn't bother to read the rest of the paragraph, so there's nothing really more to say. The point of vaccines is not "not dying" but "not getting sick". And "not getting sick" has added value in the same way that your toilet leads to the sewer rather than the street.

Public health refers to the general health conditions of a society, as an abstraction. It's better for everyone, you included, if diseases are eradicated. Not because you owe it to anyone, but because it makes you better off. Call it urban hygiene if you want, in the same way having sewers is valuable, which helps stop the spread of disease.

A vaccine is supposed to prevent you from getting sick or reducing the severity. But a vaccine is also meant to help eradicate an illness completely, so even if you conclude that not getting a vaccine in some instances doesn't rise to the level of initiation of force, not getting a vaccine reveals how little you value public health and quality of life in modern society.

There is no meaningful difference between autocracy and dictatorship. Even by the definition of the map you showed me, it fits the definition of dictatorship that Rand provides. Anyway, all your arguments only work under the presumption that Russia, as led by Putin, is a free and sovereign nation that has legitimate moral and legal claims. Did you read Grames' post? Do you agree?

Victims of dictatorships may defend themselves as they see fit, but not to wield the power of the dictatorship to do so. I would've expected you to argue that I'm flat out wrong that Russia is a dictatorship, I find it bizarre and disheartening that instead your argument went to justifying a moral right for dictatorships to defend themselves. I wonder though if you read Grames' post and agree with him? Please, try to recognize when going over all the facts again is a waste of time. It starts to come across as if you don't understand philosophical principles either, and are deliberately avoiding talking about them. It would be better if you try to make it into something productive. The real issue is a moral issue, because that colors the way that facts should be interpreted.

I'm not sure it matters, because when it gets down to it, he thinks that Russia is a sovereign nation with valid moral and legal claims, while you and I think that it is essentially a dictatorship which has no valid moral or legal claims. If he wants to accuse us of hypocrisy, and think we should also call the Ukraine a dictatorship, that just means he shouldn't be defending Russia either - Ukraine and Russia would both be illegitimate. And then we will get weird accusations about being racist against Russians.

Depends on why. If you say something like "Q is onto something" that's what I'm talking about. Whatever the Twitter files could have been, the whole thing was botched up, especially since for the sake of transparency, all the relevant details can be dropped right now.

Basically, your position is what Grames said, but you don't even know it. He managed to say in 4 sentences what you struggle to say in 170 posts in a single thread.