Товарищ

[Innula Zenovka]

The Shitocracy Doctrine

Trump, Yeltsin, and degrowth

www.nefariousrussians.com

Evernote Link

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I've been thinking about Trump's tariff extravaganza, and I'm not completely sure what to make of it all.

Obviously, he doesn't understand tariffs or economics (no wonder his grades from Wharton are a closely guarded secret), but generally it seems to me that there's some force in the general complaint that globalisation has exported manufacturing jobs to Asia (or Mexico in the case of the US), because labour is far cheaper there than in the US or Europe, and while the US and Europe have gained the advantage of cheap manufactured goods, cheap because they're produced for wages, and often in conditions, that we in the West would find unacceptable, people who've lost their jobs in manufacturing haven't really gained much from this, other than access to the cheaper goods.

Their jobs have gone, and either haven't been replaced at all, or have been replaced by low-paid and unskilled jobs like working in places like Amazon distribution centres, packing and delivering the cheap goods made available by globalisation.

So while the corporations that manufacture the goods, and their shareholders, have certainly benefited from globalisation, and so have those of us who didn't rely, and who wouldn't in the past have needed to rely, on unionised factory jobs to make a living, because we have effortless access to Amazon Prime and all the goodies it delivers at prices we find affordable, there's a sizeable minority who haven't really benefited from globalisation and who feel understandably aggrieved by this.

Obviously tariffs aren't going to fix this for anyone, but there's no denying that a lot of people have genuine grievances about globalisation, and I must admit I would rather not think about the conditions in which -- for example -- some of my remarkably inexpensive clothes are produced in Vietnam or Bangladesh, or about the conditions in Chinese or South Korean smartphone factories, and I certainly don't want to think too hard about the working conditions in some of the African countries where the rare earth metals necessary for my smartphone, tablet and PC are mined.

I'm not sure there is a solution -- like it or not, we live in an exploitative capitalist world economy, and by participating -- as we must -- in it, both as producers and consumers, we cannot help but participate in that exploitation. Taxing billionaires to produce better conditions for those who have lost out because of globalisation would help mitigate things for people who've lost out because of deindustrialisation, though that would still be at the expense of the workers in South East Asia and Africa is the foundation of those billionaires' wealth. We'd be robbing the rich to give to the not so rich, rather than restoring the fruits of their labour to the global poor.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I've been thinking about Trump's tariff extravaganza, and I'm not completely sure what to make of it all.

Obviously, he doesn't understand tariffs or economics (no wonder his grades from Wharton are a closely guarded secret), but generally it seems to me that there's some force in the general complaint that globalisation has exported manufacturing jobs to Asia (or Mexico in the case of the US), because labour is far cheaper there than in the US or Europe, and while the US and Europe have gained the advantage of cheap manufactured goods, cheap because they're produced for wages, and often in conditions, that we in the West would find unacceptable, people who've lost their jobs in manufacturing haven't really gained much from this, other than access to the cheaper goods.

Their jobs have gone, and either haven't been replaced at all, or have been replaced by low-paid and unskilled jobs like working in places like Amazon distribution centres, packing and delivering the cheap goods made available by globalisation.

So while the corporations that manufacture the goods, and their shareholders, have certainly benefited from globalisation, and so have those of us who didn't rely, and who wouldn't in the past have needed to rely, on unionised factory jobs to make a living, because we have effortless access to Amazon Prime and all the goodies it delivers at prices we find affordable, there's a sizeable minority who haven't really benefited from globalisation and who feel understandably aggrieved by this.

Obviously tariffs aren't going to fix this for anyone, but there's no denying that a lot of people have genuine grievances about globalisation, and I must admit I would rather not think about the conditions in which -- for example -- some of my remarkably inexpensive clothes are produced in Vietnam or Bangladesh, or about the conditions in Chinese or South Korean smartphone factories, and I certainly don't want to think too hard about the working conditions in some of the African countries where the rare earth metals necessary for my smartphone, tablet and PC are mined.

I'm not sure there is a solution -- like it or not, we live in an exploitative capitalist world economy, and by participating -- as we must -- in it, both as producers and consumers, we cannot help but participate in that exploitation. Taxing billionaires to produce better conditions for those who have lost out because of globalisation would help mitigate things for people who've lost out because of deindustrialisation, though that would still be at the expense of the workers in South East Asia and Africa is the foundation of those billionaires' wealth. We'd be robbing the rich to give to the not so rich, rather than restoring the fruits of their labour to the global poor.

Trotsky thinks you’re hotsky.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trotsky thinks you’re hotsky.

The irony being that I'm very much not a Marxist, for all that I find historical materialism a powerful analytical tool, since it's based on a myth of teleological history inevitably leading to heaven on earth after a final cataclysmic battle with the forces of evil, in which the righteous are preordained to overcome the powers of darkness.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

The irony being that I'm very much not a Marxist, for all that I find historical materialism a powerful analytical tool, since it's based on a myth of teleological history inevitably leading to heaven on earth after a final cataclysmic battle with the forces of evil, in which the righteous are preordained to overcome the powers of darkness.

I had to run this back and forth with ChatGPT until I think I understood it.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I had to run this back and forth with ChatGPT until I think I understood it.

Sorry about that. I was trying to summarise the thesis in books like Pankaj Mishra's Age of Anger: A History of the Present and much of John Gray's work from Black Mass onwards that Enlightenment rationalism simply took over Christian mythology and substituted humanity and human reason for God and divine providence in their understanding of an inevitable historical process leading to an apocalyptic battle with evil followed by heaven on earth.

As Gray puts it in the introduction to Black Mass,

Jesus and his followers believed they lived in an End-Time when the evils of the world were about to pass away. Sickness and death, famine and hunger, war and oppression would all cease to exist after a world-shaking battle in which the forces of evil would be utterly destroyed. Such was the faith that inspired the first Christians, and though the End-Time was re-interpreted by later Christian thinkers as a metaphor for a spiritual change, visions of Apocalypse have haunted western life ever since those early beginnings.

During the Middle Ages, Europe was shaken by mass movements inspired by the belief that history was about to end and a new world be born. These medieval Christians believed that only God could bring about the new world, but faith in the End-Time did not wither away when Christianity began to decline. On the contrary, as Christianity waned the hope of an imminent End-Time became stronger and more militant. Modern revolutionaries such as the French Jacobins and the Russian Bolsheviks detested traditional religion, but their conviction that the crimes and follies of the past could be left behind in an all-encompassing transformation of human life was a secular reincarnation of early Christian beliefs. These modern revolutionaries were radical exponents of Enlightenment thinking, which aimed to replace religion with a scientific view of the world. Yet the radical Enlightenment belief that there can be a sudden break in history, after which the flaws of human society will be for ever abolished, is a by-product of Christianity.

The Enlightenment ideologies of the past centuries were very largely spilt theology. The history of the past century is not a tale of secular advance, as bien-pensants of Right and Left like to think. The Bolshevik and Nazi seizures of power were faith-based upheavals just as much as the Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic insurrection in Iran. The very idea of revolution as a transforming event in history is owed to religion. Modern revolutionary movements are a continuation of religion by other means.

It is not only revolutionaries who have held to secular versions of religious beliefs. So too have liberal humanists, who see progress as a slow incremental struggle. The belief that the world is about to end and belief in gradual progress may seem to be opposites – one looking forward to the destruction of the world, the other to its improvement-but at bottom they are not so different. Whether they stress piecemeal change or revolutionary transformation, theories of progress are not scientific hypotheses. They are myths, which answer the human need for meaning.

Since the French Revolution a succession of utopian movements has transformed political life. Entire societies have been destroyed and the world changed for ever. The alteration envisioned by utopian thinkers has not come about, and for the most part their projects have produced results opposite to those they intended. That has not prevented similar projects being launched again and again right up to the start of the twenty-first century, when the world’s most powerful state launched a campaign to export democracy to the Middle East and throughout the world.

 

[Isabeau]

I've been thinking about Trump's tariff extravaganza, and I'm not completely sure what to make of it all.

Obviously, he doesn't understand tariffs or economics (no wonder his grades from Wharton are a closely guarded secret), but generally it seems to me that there's some force in the general complaint that globalisation has exported manufacturing jobs to Asia (or Mexico in the case of the US), because labour is far cheaper there than in the US or Europe, and while the US and Europe have gained the advantage of cheap manufactured goods, cheap because they're produced for wages, and often in conditions, that we in the West would find unacceptable, people who've lost their jobs in manufacturing haven't really gained much from this, other than access to the cheaper goods.

Their jobs have gone, and either haven't been replaced at all, or have been replaced by low-paid and unskilled jobs like working in places like Amazon distribution centres, packing and delivering the cheap goods made available by globalisation.

So while the corporations that manufacture the goods, and their shareholders, have certainly benefited from globalisation, and so have those of us who didn't rely, and who wouldn't in the past have needed to rely, on unionised factory jobs to make a living, because we have effortless access to Amazon Prime and all the goodies it delivers at prices we find affordable, there's a sizeable minority who haven't really benefited from globalisation and who feel understandably aggrieved by this.

Obviously tariffs aren't going to fix this for anyone, but there's no denying that a lot of people have genuine grievances about globalisation, and I must admit I would rather not think about the conditions in which -- for example -- some of my remarkably inexpensive clothes are produced in Vietnam or Bangladesh, or about the conditions in Chinese or South Korean smartphone factories, and I certainly don't want to think too hard about the working conditions in some of the African countries where the rare earth metals necessary for my smartphone, tablet and PC are mined.

I'm not sure there is a solution -- like it or not, we live in an exploitative capitalist world economy, and by participating -- as we must -- in it, both as producers and consumers, we cannot help but participate in that exploitation. Taxing billionaires to produce better conditions for those who have lost out because of globalisation would help mitigate things for people who've lost out because of deindustrialisation, though that would still be at the expense of the workers in South East Asia and Africa is the foundation of those billionaires' wealth. We'd be robbing the rich to give to the not so rich, rather than restoring the fruits of their labour to the global poor.

Never been a big fan of globalization. Although it isn’t always negative, it often leads to exploitation. We have trouble showing solidarity amongst ourselves in smaller communities, imagine on such a scale. I can still admit there are some benefits, but there’s a difference between trying to turn the ship around, and crashing it on purpose, especially when those at the helm are doing it to line their own pockets. It isn’t out of some desire to help the poor or to make markets more fair.

It’s complicated, and my brain is too small, but I will admit all this talk about markets crashing, and the Dow Jones, and so and so’s portfolio is frustrating me. It’s almost as if all the rest wasn’t so important to those at the top (banks, industries, even newspapers) but now, they all have something to say about this insane US administration.

 

[Casey Pelous]

... It’s almost as if all the rest wasn’t so important to those at the top (banks, industries, even newspapers) but now, they all have something to say about this insane US administration.

Yup.

Banishing people, sometimes to foreign prisons, without trials; avenging perceived wrongs by law firms that dared to represent opponents; firing FBI agents who investigated crimes committed in support of Dinkus Dickus; wiping out whole departments of the federal government;, trashing chunks of election security systems; erasing evidence of minority and LGBTQ+ contributions to the nation; cavalierly abandoning international agreements; turning our national back on Ukraine in favor of his butt-buddy Vladimir; crazy talk about annexing various countries; threatening Medicare and Social Security, and on and on and on -- "And in other news ....."

Stock market takes a colossal dump for two days -- "Hey, that's my 401k you're messing with! This is serious!!!"

As Obama said the other day, "Imagine if I had done ANY of this!"

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Sorry about that. I was trying to summarise the thesis in books like Pankaj Mishra's Age of Anger: A History of the Present and much of John Gray's work from Black Mass onwards that Enlightenment rationalism simply took over Christian mythology and substituted humanity and human reason for God and divine providence in their understanding of an inevitable historical process leading to an apocalyptic battle with evil followed by heaven on earth.

As Gray puts it in the introduction to Black Mass,

Okay, that’s fascinating.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Okay, that’s fascinating.

He argues, very convincingly, that the idea human history has any sort of direction or goal starts with Christianity. The Greeks and Romans don't seem to have thought it did, and it's not -- at least according to Gray -- present in classical Judaism. Hinduism and Buddhism both see it as an eternal cycle. The early Christians seem to have thought that the world was soon going to end, originally during their lifetimes, and then when that didn't happen, at some point in the not too far distant future, after the events prophesied in Revelations.

Revolutionary movements from the Enlightenment onwards, he suggests, have simply taken over this structure, substituted human reason for divine providence as the motive power of history, and foreseen an earthly utopia after a decisive confrontation with whatever forces are ranged against them. It's present, in a slightly different form, in ideas of progress -- while there's not necessarily an apocalyptic battle on the horizon, there are constant struggles with the forces of reaction who are -- being on "the wrong side of history" -- predestined to be overcome by the slow but unstoppable march of human progress, guided by reason.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I never before thought of John the Revelator as a revolutionary literary genius but here we are.

 

[Free]

The early Christians seem to have thought that the world was soon going to end, originally during their lifetimes, and then when that didn't happen, at some point in the not too far distant future

FOR THE PAST 2,000 YEARS. At some point, they really need to stop renewing the contract.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Soen Eber]

Sorry about that. I was trying to summarise the thesis in books like Pankaj Mishra's Age of Anger: A History of the Present and much of John Gray's work from Black Mass onwards that Enlightenment rationalism simply took over Christian mythology and substituted humanity and human reason for God and divine providence in their understanding of an inevitable historical process leading to an apocalyptic battle with evil followed by heaven on earth.

As Gray puts it in the introduction to Black Mass,

This actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of change to the political order, or resistance to change, has always been theologically-based, with a certain generosity of spirit to the loading of the word "theology." Technology may make things easier, but it's the faith-based considerations (religion, communism, democracy, capitalism, etc) that control how things evolve. And teleological considerations fermented from Abrahamic religions have always played an out-sized role in them.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

FOR THE PAST 2,000 YEARS. At some point, they really need to stop renewing the contract.

St Augustine managed to deliteralise the idea, I think, distinguishing between the City of Man, which exists in time and is irrevocably marked by original sin, and the perfect City of God, which is outside time. Heaven comes in the afterlife, not on earth. There were always millennial cults seeking to bring about heaven on earth, but they're what the Inquisition is for.

This actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of change to the political order, or resistance to change, has always been theologically-based, with a certain generosity of spirit to the loading of the word "theology." Technology may make things easier, but it's the faith-based considerations (religion, communism, democracy, capitalism, etc) that control how things evolve. And teleological considerations fermented from Abrahamic religions have always played an out-sized role in them.

I think the point is that things happen for all sorts of reasons, but people tend to delude themselves that events follow some pre-ordained historical pattern, be it the transition from feudalism to capitalism and industrialisation, thus creating both the bourgeoisie and the organised proletariat who will inevitably overthrow them, thus bringing about socialism and, ultimately, pure communism (at which point history apparently comes to a full stop), or -- as was mistakenly believed by some US politicians and their advisors for a while -- that the world economy will inevitably develop into global laissez faire capitalism, and states will inevitably adopt capitalist democracy, thus also bringing about the end of history.

Both are ideas that make sense only in terms of structure of belief that traditionally sees human history as a narrative structure with a pre-ordained direction and end. Enlightenment rationalism thought it was replacing religious dogma with science and reason but, in fact, simply replaced divine providence as the guiding force with myths of progress of one sort of another.

While the sciences do progress, with discoveries building from each other (at least until the latest discovery puts the whole hitherto existing scientific paradigm in doubt, at which point science has to develop a new paradigm that encompasses both the older discoveries and the new ones that don't fit into the previous paradigm -- e.g. Einstein's discoveries overturning the Newtonian vision of physics), politics, ethics and economics don't develop in anything like the same way.

It's comforting to think that people used to believe slavery, or torture, or racism or bigotry were OK but now we know better, but that's self-evidently not the case.

 

[Free]

St Augustine managed to deliteralise the idea, I think, distinguishing between the City of Man, which exists in time and is irrevocably marked by original sin, and the perfect City of God, which is outside time. Heaven comes in the afterlife, not on earth. There were always millennial cults seeking to bring about heaven on earth, but they're what the Inquisition is for.

Augustine believed suffering is the fault of humanity and original sin, that it's a just punishment for our abuse of free will. Even new born infants are guilty and deserving of it. I'm not sure that's an improvement on the part of the Church in regards to their philosophy. Since the Albigensians are the reason for the first Inquisition, I'm not sure it was due to a heresy of "millennialism."

 

[Soen Eber]

Augustine believed suffering is the fault of humanity and original sin, that it's a just punishment for our abuse of free will. Even new born infants are guilty and deserving of it. I'm not sure that's an improvement on the part of the Church in regards to their philosophy. Since the Albigensians are the reason for the first Inquisition, I'm not sure it was due to a heresy of "millennialism."

Well, sometimes an ethno-religious cleansing of dualistic scripturalist reformers seeking a spiritual return to a simpler life of apostolicism and a gnostic rejection of the hypostatic union of Christ in response to a hypocritical hierarchy seated in church doctrine, wine, women, idiocy and song is just an ethno-religious cleansing of blah blah blah in the form of a genocidal cigar, and not a part of a larger thematic, sweeping, historical dialectical movement of nations and cultures. And big obtuse words used for humorous effect - we are talking about religion and sociology, after all, so there!

tl,dr: Innula is right in the general sense and Free is right in this specific instance. Not everything is directly tied to broad sweeping faith-influenced historicity but there can be a loose coupling as a demonstration of spiritis mundi, or the spirit and tides of the world.

Yes, I am making sense and responding to both Innula and Free, I did think it through. Innula is watching and she won't let me or anyone else be intellectually lazy.

 

[Free]

I dare Soen to take that "Well" paragraph and translate it to something a person without a dozen years of religious studies could comprehend.

(When I reached "hypostatic union of Christ," I was bent over so much from laughing it caused an abdominal reaction where I almost lost my lunch. And I had lunch many hours ago.)

 

[Soen Eber]

I dare Soen to take that "Well" paragraph and translate it to something a person without a dozen years of religious studies could comprehend.

As you wish:

Well, sometimes a cleansing of a self-specific ethnic group holding religious beliefs where they exist both in Heaven as a spirit, and on Earth as merely an evil and sinful creation of the Devil, denying their Earthly existence in favor of their spiritual one, and who hold their beliefs specific to scripture and the word of Christ and God, and not to the interpretation of a Catholic hierarchy (i.e., they were scripturalists) reformers who wish to return to a simpler life of spreading the word and witnessing through their behavior (apostolicism) as individuals desiring to live in Christ without the imposed burden of the doctrine and hierarchy of the Catholic church. They rejected not only their own Earthly existence but even that of of Jesus Christ himself, who they understood as not a man but only as a spirit (a rejection of the hypostatic union of Christ's body with his spirit, and a rejection of Christ's virgin birth). They did this in reaction to the corrupt, hypocritical church leadership of their immediate region who held only a very limited understanding of the Bible, not fit to teach as they achieved their positions through bribery and influence. Catharism in Southern France can only be understood as a local reaction to the abuses they had seen, and their rejection of the Church and the cigar-shaped genocide visited upon them should not be seen as a broader clashing of faiths and theologies opposed to each other as part of a larger, sweeping movement.

Not as funny.

Also, I'm just a hack with no formal training, but I find Christianity to be very, very funny. A good thing, but funny.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I asked ChatGPT to summarise Soen's verbose version as a limerick. Not sure the result scans properly, but...

(I think the last line would scan better as Innula's right; Free [also] comes close.)

Here's your limerick:


A cleansing, with jargon verbose,
From doctrines, hypocrisy gross.
Though broad themes collide,
Not all must be tied—
Innula's right; Free comes close.

ChatGPT - Ethno-religious cleansing limerick

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