Money talks, geography walks. Prime examples are the geography surrounding the Big Apple, or in my case the Stinky Onion.
I left the Stinky Onion, i.e. the Shikaakwa Satrapy [1], once known as the State of Illinois decades ago. The old name is a total cultural appropriation of the Illiniwek Confederation and should be abolished as part of any socially just and indigenous peoples aware reparation. Even though by this time, intermarriage makes a determination of who exactly is indigenous a somewhat dubious distinction.
My current state of repose has no city larger than 150k population and it seems to work quite well for all its inhabitants.
That little divot on the western border of MA is so the NY police could raid the gambling dens there.
Our problem with the growing single party state phenomena may be considered on another level beside just geographic population density. The Chinese influence on our culture and lifestyles is likely just as important. Every influential left wing institution has monetary connections with the CCP.
1. Hollywood – completely in the thrall of CCP money.
2. Academia – funded and occupied by CCP transfer students.
3. US research and Big tech – cheap high quality tech workers from over seas, cheap products being sold by Amazon. Google and the social media have been working with the Chinese on fascist systems to control protest. Something they appear to be implementing.
4. High level Government – how many Democrats have been compromised – just the one’s we know are hugely powerful including the POTUS.
This has gone beyond population density – it’s something even more hidden and virulent and appears to be orchestrated
4, is a big one and it isn’t just Democrats being compromised. There are a lot of top tier former military and law enforcement that are either willingly or unwittingly in China’s pocket. Too many former generals, DOJ, and “intelligence community” get out and go work for companies that are associated with the CCP.
3, is troubling because of the backdoor for spying and IP theft.
1 and 2, shouldn’t be a big deal because if people were confident in the appeal of our culture they would realize that is what attracts Chinese students and audiences and wouldn’t bend over to appease people running concentration camps. But too many in these American institutions are jealous of the Chinese system and want camps in the USA.
I can’t figure out what, if anything, this article is advocating.
Rather than parts of Oregon joining Idaho, they should just form their own state and if PR was to become a state, then Republicans should also support Eastern Washington forming a new state so that several new right leaning states would help balance the introduction of PR.
Isn’t it weird though that while Democrats think we are an imperialist colonial country that they want to force statehood on PR rather than give them the freedom to be their own country?
Sorry, I think this is not even wrong territory. First, there’s no advantage to reorganizing any state. At any point, leadership and the populace of the states could choose to make the right decisions. Assuming that could happen is no different than assuming we could reorganize these states with the same leadership and populace into a better form. You’re still stuck – the state competent enough to reorganize well doesn’t need to, while the states that desperately need something better will likely mess up any reorganization. How does one involve the Camilluses to make such things work?
Second, a reorg introduces a huge amount of uncertainty. How is that preferable to the usual solution of fixing what’s broken – particularly, as noted above you need the same competent resources for both approaches to work well? My confidence is not boosted by the vagueness of the speculation or alleged benefits.
Here, for example, the author advertises the virtues of the “updated” mixed regime. But who are the factions of the mixed regime? You have the “common people” (complete with scare quotes) lumped in as one faction. What’s left over among the say, “uncommon people” to constitute all these other factions? Sounds like a massive marginalization of almost everyone.
Third, is the anti-democratic meandering, such as peculiar praise for like-minded philosophers.
Classical philosophers and historians alike condemn democracy as a bad form of government, in part because of its partiality but mostly because of the specific nature of the demos, which they contend is the polis’s least wise and least moderate part.
Keep in mind that those classical philosophers and historians were elites who were often at the receiving end of populist movements (and thus often naturally at odds with democracy, complete with axes to grind).
And I doubt if they were alive today, we’d consider their musing very realistic. For example, Plato’s “philosopher king” fantasy – where society would be ruled by the wise without regard to how such a society would be stable (for example, making sure it remained ruled by the wise) or whether that was a productive outlet for wise people. Much of Plato’s work reads like a college student with a blog who is infatuated with the latest intellectual trends and fantasizes about a world where his strengths and interests are highly valued.
There’s inherent erm, conflict of interest for a philosopher to wish for rule by philosophers, much like a Pokemon card collector wishing for a world ruled by Pokemon card collectors.
So the article meanders around speculating on how wonderful it’d be, if we reworked the US boundary lines in some nebulous way and complaining about the evils of democracy. Eh, it’s not feeling like any interesting rocks will be turned over.
“Much of Plato’s work reads like a college student with a blog who is infatuated with the latest intellectual trends and fantasizes about a world where his strengths and interests are highly valued.”
That is one of the most brilliant critiques of Plato I’ve ever read. Kudos, Karl, and thank you for it.
I see I’m suffering from the weird “+” phenomena above. I fixed it for this post, but I wonder how such a bug came about.
Money talks, geography walks. Prime examples are the geography surrounding the Big Apple, or in my case the Stinky Onion.
I left the Stinky Onion, i.e. the Shikaakwa Satrapy [1], once known as the State of Illinois decades ago. The old name is a total cultural appropriation of the Illiniwek Confederation and should be abolished as part of any socially just and indigenous peoples aware reparation. Even though by this time, intermarriage makes a determination of who exactly is indigenous a somewhat dubious distinction.
My current state of repose has no city larger than 150k population and it seems to work quite well for all its inhabitants.
[1] https://chicagology.com/chicagoname/
This is a fun book:
https://www.amazon.com/How-States-Got-Their-Shapes/dp/0061431397
That little divot on the western border of MA is so the NY police could raid the gambling dens there.
Our problem with the growing single party state phenomena may be considered on another level beside just geographic population density. The Chinese influence on our culture and lifestyles is likely just as important. Every influential left wing institution has monetary connections with the CCP.
1. Hollywood – completely in the thrall of CCP money.
2. Academia – funded and occupied by CCP transfer students.
3. US research and Big tech – cheap high quality tech workers from over seas, cheap products being sold by Amazon. Google and the social media have been working with the Chinese on fascist systems to control protest. Something they appear to be implementing.
4. High level Government – how many Democrats have been compromised – just the one’s we know are hugely powerful including the POTUS.
This has gone beyond population density – it’s something even more hidden and virulent and appears to be orchestrated
4, is a big one and it isn’t just Democrats being compromised. There are a lot of top tier former military and law enforcement that are either willingly or unwittingly in China’s pocket. Too many former generals, DOJ, and “intelligence community” get out and go work for companies that are associated with the CCP.
3, is troubling because of the backdoor for spying and IP theft.
1 and 2, shouldn’t be a big deal because if people were confident in the appeal of our culture they would realize that is what attracts Chinese students and audiences and wouldn’t bend over to appease people running concentration camps. But too many in these American institutions are jealous of the Chinese system and want camps in the USA.
I can’t figure out what, if anything, this article is advocating.
Rather than parts of Oregon joining Idaho, they should just form their own state and if PR was to become a state, then Republicans should also support Eastern Washington forming a new state so that several new right leaning states would help balance the introduction of PR.
Isn’t it weird though that while Democrats think we are an imperialist colonial country that they want to force statehood on PR rather than give them the freedom to be their own country?
Sorry, I think this is not even wrong territory. First, there’s no advantage to reorganizing any state. At any point, leadership and the populace of the states could choose to make the right decisions. Assuming that could happen is no different than assuming we could reorganize these states with the same leadership and populace into a better form. You’re still stuck – the state competent enough to reorganize well doesn’t need to, while the states that desperately need something better will likely mess up any reorganization. How does one involve the Camilluses to make such things work?
Second, a reorg introduces a huge amount of uncertainty. How is that preferable to the usual solution of fixing what’s broken – particularly, as noted above you need the same competent resources for both approaches to work well? My confidence is not boosted by the vagueness of the speculation or alleged benefits.
Here, for example, the author advertises the virtues of the “updated” mixed regime. But who are the factions of the mixed regime? You have the “common people” (complete with scare quotes) lumped in as one faction. What’s left over among the say, “uncommon people” to constitute all these other factions? Sounds like a massive marginalization of almost everyone.
Third, is the anti-democratic meandering, such as peculiar praise for like-minded philosophers.
Keep in mind that those classical philosophers and historians were elites who were often at the receiving end of populist movements (and thus often naturally at odds with democracy, complete with axes to grind).
And I doubt if they were alive today, we’d consider their musing very realistic. For example, Plato’s “philosopher king” fantasy – where society would be ruled by the wise without regard to how such a society would be stable (for example, making sure it remained ruled by the wise) or whether that was a productive outlet for wise people. Much of Plato’s work reads like a college student with a blog who is infatuated with the latest intellectual trends and fantasizes about a world where his strengths and interests are highly valued.
There’s inherent erm, conflict of interest for a philosopher to wish for rule by philosophers, much like a Pokemon card collector wishing for a world ruled by Pokemon card collectors.
So the article meanders around speculating on how wonderful it’d be, if we reworked the US boundary lines in some nebulous way and complaining about the evils of democracy. Eh, it’s not feeling like any interesting rocks will be turned over.
“Much of Plato’s work reads like a college student with a blog who is infatuated with the latest intellectual trends and fantasizes about a world where his strengths and interests are highly valued.”
That is one of the most brilliant critiques of Plato I’ve ever read. Kudos, Karl, and thank you for it.
I see I’m suffering from the weird “+” phenomena above. I fixed it for this post, but I wonder how such a bug came about.