BC POLITICS
Saved by @Jacobtldr

Our pretensions to civilization have become very thin. Political violence was legitimized last year and is spreading wildly now. "Might makes right" is clearly the only "principle" behind freedom of speech. That's why Chinese Communists will never be censored by Big Tech.

 When every "principle" becomes nothing but a ruthless exercise of power, it's not surprising that a growing number of people conclude they must demonstrate some sort of power in order to be taken seriously. Violence is the crudest exercise of power.
A well-run civilization makes it clear *universally* that violence is absolutely unacceptable. Giving free passes for irresponsible rhetoric and destruction to groups favored by the dominant political ideology of the State undermines that message.
We must also people peaceable means of expressing themselves and controlling their own lives, to relieve the pressures that can lead to violent outbursts and other forms of lawlessness. The less healthy discourse and freedom of action you have, the more pressure builds up.
It's dangerous when large numbers of people begin drawing the conclusion that might makes right, that laws and principles bend easily for those who have the political strength to bend them. Might makes right is the code of anarchy and barbarism, the antithesis of civilization.
A great deal of our society today boils down to anarchy and barbarism arrogantly disguising itself with the trappings of civilization. That's the key to understanding cancel culture and crybullies: they sanctify their lust for power by loudly claiming to be helpless victims.
It's very difficult to remain a civilized nation of honest principles and high ideals when power and money become highly centralized. Accumulate enough Might in one place, and it will inevitably begin making Right. Pretensions to principle become easily exposed as hypocrisy.
And for a generation now, our political culture has been loudly sending the signal that people who cling to the stated principles of our civilization, who play by all the rules, are chumps, suckers, and punching bags. Elites laugh merrily at their polite and ineffectual protests.
The Tea Party folks who held orderly rallies and meticulously cleaned up after themselves a decade ago were called domestic terrorists, treated like violent subversives, slandered as racist cavemen, and destroyed without remorse by the establishment of the party they SUPPORTED.
The message has been sent, over and over again: you want to be taken seriously? Get some real power. Show some muscle. Nobody in D.C. is afraid of people who work hard all day and pay their taxes. You have no connections, no influence, no leverage. You're no threat.
Even the electoral strength of the middle class, the only real threat it ever posed to the power elite, has been diluted to near-irrelevance. Big city machines dominate state politics. The middle class has been made dependent on government, afraid to bite the hand that feeds it.
And now they're waking up to discover they won't even be allowed to SPEAK any more. Sorry, chumps, but you don't have enough might to protect your "right" to free speech. You're all classified as violent extremists now. The people with real Might have passed judgement on you.
We should never have budged an inch from principles such as standing against political violence and defending real individual rights - like the right to free speech, not the coercive bogus "rights" invented by totalitarians to demand ever-greater levels of obedience from us.
But budge we did, and now it's absurd to watch the power elite pretend they have no idea where any of this is coming from. Where did anyone get the idea they must demonstrate the capacity and will for violence to be taken seriously? They got it from YOU. They watched the news.
And you're not "de-escalating" or listening to "grievances," as you always do when preferred ideological groups break stuff and kill people. You're making it worse, ratcheting the pressure up, taking advantage, giving them another searing lesson in how Might Makes Right.
None of that absolves individuals from blame for their actions. Plenty of blame to go around. The pandemic is clearly exacerbating tensions and rubbing salt in many deep social wounds. But let's not act puzzled at where anyone got the idea that political violence works. /end

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Xi Jinping's speech at Davos boiled down to: The world has no choice but to do business with China, and if you want to do business with China, you need to stop criticizing our tyranny and questioning our lies about the

Xi's address to the World Economic Forum will serve as well as any other moment for historians to mark the beginning of the Authoritarian Era. He said nothing new, but he restated the narratives and demands of Chinese fascism from a post-pandemic position of aggressive strength.

For the first time, Xi spoke to a world that is beginning to accept the tenets of authoritarianism, thanks to the incredible political and economic damage from China's coronavirus. China's ideals have become as viral as Covid-19.

Thanks to the pandemic, the political elites of the world now universally see their citizens as dangerous mobs that must be tightly controlled for their own good. Most of them always thought that way, but now they can say it openly and act aggressively on their prejudices.

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Political violence is always wrong and should never be tolerated from anyone. Once "protesters" threaten lives and property, their grievances and ideology should become absolutely irrelevant to the situation.

That is, obviously, not the country we live in.

Long ago, we had an attitude of zero tolerance for terrorism, "we do not negotiate with terrorists," etc. One reason for this was the implicit understanding that negotiating with terrorism legitimizes it. Violence becomes an instrument of politics.

Some of us warned all last year that treating violence as acceptable, even laudable, from SOME people would mainstream it and touch off an arms race. Everyone would start getting the idea that only groups with a demonstrated capacity for violence are taken seriously.

When violence becomes acceptable from one party and its clients, one ideology, it becomes an instrument of authoritarianism. That's why authoritarian regimes frequently have violent vigilante groups roaming the streets in addition to their vast security and military forces.

Iran, for example, has all sorts of heavily armed police and security forces, working for both its secular and theocratic governments, but it ALSO has ultra-violent "vigilante" groups indulged by the State whose "grievances" supposedly justify vandalism and murder.
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Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.

One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they MUST work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don't.
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As @davereaboi pointed out, the ecosystem that feeds on the endless torrent of deficit-fueled D.C. spending is vast beyond belief, and it has tentacles that reach around the world. That ecosystem has multiple layers, and every one of them will fight to keep Big Gov money flowing.

There are entities wholly dedicated to spend money spent by entities that spend money spent by entities that spend money spent by entities that spend money from D.C. Many are invisible to taxpayers. Some are foreign operations utterly beyond the reach of American voters.

And even when an outsider comes along and dislodges a few swamp creatures, we find another massive ecosystem dedicated to breeding and replacing them. Most people in the heartland have no idea how vast is the machinery that produces manpower for the permanent bureaucracy.

Pluck out one parasite, and a swarm of fresh parasites is ready to flow in and replace it. Educational institutions and bureaucratic recruitment systems are working around the clock to embed the ideology of statism in legions of aspiring government employees and NGO staffers.
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He's wrong to prioritise the public over Labour Party
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The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

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Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

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1 box for 4 million people.
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In the area I know best, climate change, it's been found repeatedly that climate denialists & skeptics have, on average, MORE higher education than those who accept the science. They know MORE about climate science. They have, on average, HIGHER verbal intelligence.

What they do is adopt the conclusion that best serves their social tribe and then use their intelligence & education to build a case for it. It's called "motivated reasoning" & everyone is subject to it, very much including the smartest people.
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