Comment by jacquesm
6 days ago
Yes, you're pretending to be a 'realist' who is wise because of your grounded worldview, but you totally miss the forest for the trees: if we don't want to end with blowing ourselves up then we have to depart from the might is right and 'how the world is' mentality because that stops us from changing into a future where we will not blow ourselves up.
Your worldview is essentially a pessimistic one, mine an optimistic one: I think we are capable of change. We just make the stupid mistake of putting egomaniacs in positions of power all the time and then we are surprised by the outcomes.
Some of the most powerful words ever spoken in American history were 'I have a dream'. Dreams are good, especially if they are dreams of a better world and we all should strive to create that world, not to declare it a pipe dream and get on with the business of raping each other.
I am not "pretending" anything. That's quite a personally aggressive term and I don't know what your beef against me is.
I don't have anything against what you wrote but I think that it has no discussion value in context and probably in general.
I would suggest that you take a look at the "Politics and the English Language" essay by Orwell. The person you are responding to is making a fair point that this is well trodden ground, albeit not in the most diplomatic terms. It would be helpful to engage with the arguments presented, otherwise we are just spinning our wheels here unconsciously relitigating issues from the 1930s.
Strange oblique accusation as neither Venezuela nor my comments have anytging to do with the "the 30s" or even politics (or Germany's past). Perhaps there is a lack of perspective and indeed realism in the reply or a Pavlovian reaction to "Trump" conditioned by some media (Trump is a fascist, Musk a Nazi, etc).
As said there were no arguments presented nor anything to discuss about the geopolitical situation so I don't know what to engage with.
An interesting discussiin might be about the reasons for the US' actions and their reasons for this course of action (capture) vs more classic coup.
To be helpful, do you have a solution in mind?
If so, what’s the next step and how long do you think it will take for a world in which no country is above the law… but no mechanism to create and enforce such law?
Einstein had some interesting thoughts about this, I don't have a reference handy but it boils down to a UN with teeth, effectively a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.
Even so, there is a lot of potential for abuse there too and it will most likely never happen because human nature is what it is.
> a single world government. And I think that that is something I could get behind because countries are not stable enough over a long enough period of time to give us what we need.
I assume you would want such a world government to be some form of democracy? If so, it would mean near-zero voice for Australians (0.32% of world population), Germany (1%), The Netherlands (0.21%), UK (0.83%), France (0.83%).
It would, however, mean much more say for Russia (1.7%), China (17.2%), India (17.8%).
What moral code should such a democratic world government adopt? Would it be secular or religious?
Even if we thought that end-state is ideal, I have a very hard time seeing practical steps that get us there other than through bloodshed (similar to how many current nation states got formed). One exception might be a common enemy that unites the vast majority of humans, e.g. an alien invasion.
Given the huge coordination problem of forming and maintaining a single world government (top-down), I would prefer a more bottoms-up, federated approach where secular, democratic, free-ish market, values continue to spread.
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