I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Well, maybe genetics is part, maybe a large part of the reason why men are more likely to be violent. But we don't simply act solely on the basis of our genetic inheritance. We also have choices. We can learn to control our violent urges, as many decent men are able to do.
And just as pretty much all societies have been patriarchal, in very many of those societies over many times there have also been movements to control and channel men's urges and to teach and encourage them to behave well, especially to women.
What puzzles me is that a time when we are supposed to believe in equality and be against bad 'isms, like sexism, it seems to be as bad as ever. We pay lip service to equality but the reality seems to be darker in many ways. There is a glorification of violence, of sexual violence, a view that women fundamentally only exist for the benefit of men and not in their own right that makes it harder than it need be for men to rise above their genetic inheritance.
But if you are right and men are basically wolves then yes we will have to restrict their freedoms to stop them being such a nuisance.
Not of all us, please. Those of us who are asexuals are not likely to behave in such a fashion.
Well said, Mr Ydoethur. We are more likely to be victims of predatory, aggressive women.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
What puzzles me is that a time when we are supposed to believe in equality and be against bad 'isms, like sexism, it seems to be as bad as ever. We pay lip service to equality but the reality seems to be darker in many ways.
Perhaps some people, by doing various superficially correct things and saying the right things, contrarily feel empowered to act in improper ways as they surely must be good people. Their sexism cannot be sexism because they'd never do that. Or authorities presume since they have all the right policies and words about it that they don't need to keep a proper eye out for poor behaviour.
This
Chief Constable Savage is doing well. He’s passed all his diversity courses - got 100% on every multiple choice exam. Got any array of awards in a glass cabinet for community relations. A probationer polishes them for him, once a week. Soft cloth, not too much abrasive….
Savage now supervises the arresting of people who order their coffee black.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
There are of course a handful of the types you say floating around. And that of course should be stopped. But they aren't a majority of parliament or Goldman Sachs or Blackrock. The vast majority of them, even if now making bank, still have plenty of friends and family on normal incomes and with normal lives. The idea they are socially separated is nonsense.
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
There are of course a handful of the types you say floating around. And that of course should be stopped. But they aren't a majority of parliament or Goldman Sachs or Blackrock. The vast majority of them, even if now making bank, still have plenty of friends and family on normal incomes and with normal lives. The idea they are socially separated is nonsense.
It's a very nice bridge and I'm inviting offers in the region of £2 million.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
Surely these are just more balloons from China.
We'll know it's really on when one is spotted over Blair Atholl...
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
Surely these are just more balloons from China.
Are they inflating their ambitions?
My guess is that these ones will have nothing on them but weather equipment to "prove" that's what they all were.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
That wasn't free sex, it was rape.
Well that’s the point. Things were not noble in the olden days.
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
Surely these are just more balloons from China.
Are they inflating their ambitions?
My guess is that these ones will have nothing on them but weather equipment to "prove" that's what they all were.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
There are of course a handful of the types you say floating around. And that of course should be stopped. But they aren't a majority of parliament or Goldman Sachs or Blackrock. The vast majority of them, even if now making bank, still have plenty of friends and family on normal incomes and with normal lives. The idea they are socially separated is nonsense.
When I drank in the pubs in Westminster, it was very common to see MPs and ministers out for a beer. Lots of very senior civil servants - though they tended to be in different pubs, by location. There were a couple of late night places where you could see a fair chunk of the rulers of the nation at any one time.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Yes, they understand that. "It's the same the whole world over./ Ain't it all a crying shame? / It's the rich that get the pleasure, / And the poor that get the blame." But most working class people don't know how deep a contempt and disgust the ruling class have for them. Feeling sick at the tw*ttish way that somebody like Jacob Rees-Mogg behaves in front of cameras doesn't give much of an insight into this.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
Do you actually know anything about working class life?
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
That wasn't free sex, it was rape.
Well that’s the point. Things were not noble in the olden days.
I was reading the transcript of a recent police interview yesterday when the accused expressed bewilderment about the idea that you could have rape in a relationship. He genuinely did not understand it. For him a relationship meant that the woman was available to him for sex at all times, awake or asleep. It is actually quite disturbing that men can actually think that after wasting 12 or more years occasionally attending school and supposedly being educated. But they do.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
There are of course a handful of the types you say floating around. And that of course should be stopped. But they aren't a majority of parliament or Goldman Sachs or Blackrock. The vast majority of them, even if now making bank, still have plenty of friends and family on normal incomes and with normal lives. The idea they are socially separated is nonsense.
Come to think of it, there is a brilliant vignette in the book of the Day Of The Jackal - a very very mediocre British civil servant who has prospered because of his bland, confirming mediocrity.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
It would be pretty well impossible that anything with the technology for interstellar travel (vastly improbable in itself) would get shot down by anything we have. Twice.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
I was going to say that Chinese spy balloons seem to be the new UFOs. Slightly more believable I must say.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He's a hypocrite. He demanded multiple VONC in May and declared there could never be another in Johnson.
He's also stupid.
And he's never really answered the questions on his tax affairs.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
Surely it they were aliens it'd be the F-22s that were taken down.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
There are of course a handful of the types you say floating around. And that of course should be stopped. But they aren't a majority of parliament or Goldman Sachs or Blackrock. The vast majority of them, even if now making bank, still have plenty of friends and family on normal incomes and with normal lives. The idea they are socially separated is nonsense.
Come to think of it, there is a brilliant vignette in the book of the Day Of The Jackal - a very very mediocre British civil servant who has prospered because of his bland, confirming mediocrity.
I've been trying to mirror that sort of approach, and it's harder than it looks.
It does remind me of one of Ben Elton's lesser books, Blast from the Past, with a military officer whose career mirrored that of one of the main characters, who was meant to be a decent officer, as he kept rising through the ranks thanks to general clueless inoffensiveness and avoiding scandal.
IIRC in the end he becomes Chief of the General Staff and then president.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
How much money did he waste on the biased imperial measurements survey?
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
"Spy agencies report hundreds more UFO sightings since 2021
Many of the over 500 “unidentified aerial phenomena” appear to perform maneuvers that are highly advanced.
In total, 510 “unidentified aerial phenomena” observed in protected airspace or near sensitive facilities have been compiled as of August of last year, according to the report to Congress from the director of national intelligence.
Of those, 366 were gathered since a preliminary assessment was published in 2021 — an increase attributed to a “reduced stigma” around reporting, and a better understanding of the intelligence and safety threats that the phenomena may pose.
More than half of those new sightings — most of which came from Navy and Air Force pilots — exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” according to the report: 26 were characterized as drones; 163 were labeled balloons or “balloon-like entities”; and six were described as “clutter.”
That still leaves 171 sightings, however, some of which “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” the report says. Few other details were provided about these unidentified entities, though the report noted that no U.S. aircraft has ever collided with a UFO, and observing them has caused no adverse health effects so far."
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He's a hypocrite. He demanded multiple VONC in May and declared there could never be another in Johnson.
He's also stupid.
And he's never really answered the questions on his tax affairs.
Apart from that, I have nothing against him.
You might as well say he's a politician. You can guarantee that those in the PCP urging loyalty to Sunak right now are the ones who were the biggest briefers against Truss.
He doesn't strike me as stupid - he speaks fluently and answers the question. Perhaps he's rubbish at maths.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
There are of course a handful of the types you say floating around. And that of course should be stopped. But they aren't a majority of parliament or Goldman Sachs or Blackrock. The vast majority of them, even if now making bank, still have plenty of friends and family on normal incomes and with normal lives. The idea they are socially separated is nonsense.
Come to think of it, there is a brilliant vignette in the book of the Day Of The Jackal - a very very mediocre British civil servant who has prospered because of his bland, confirming mediocrity.
I've been trying to mirror that sort of approach, and it's harder than it looks.
It does remind me of one of Ben Elton's lesser books, Blast from the Past, with a military officer whose career mirrored that of one of the main characters, who was meant to be a decent officer, as he kept rising through the ranks thanks to general clueless inoffensiveness and avoiding scandal.
IIRC in the end he becomes Chief of the General Staff and then president.
That’s an old old plot. “Luck” by Mark Twain is a classic of the genre.
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
"Spy agencies report hundreds more UFO sightings since 2021
Many of the over 500 “unidentified aerial phenomena” appear to perform maneuvers that are highly advanced.
In total, 510 “unidentified aerial phenomena” observed in protected airspace or near sensitive facilities have been compiled as of August of last year, according to the report to Congress from the director of national intelligence.
Of those, 366 were gathered since a preliminary assessment was published in 2021 — an increase attributed to a “reduced stigma” around reporting, and a better understanding of the intelligence and safety threats that the phenomena may pose.
More than half of those new sightings — most of which came from Navy and Air Force pilots — exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” according to the report: 26 were characterized as drones; 163 were labeled balloons or “balloon-like entities”; and six were described as “clutter.”
That still leaves 171 sightings, however, some of which “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” the report says. Few other details were provided about these unidentified entities, though the report noted that no U.S. aircraft has ever collided with a UFO, and observing them has caused no adverse health effects so far."
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
Surely it they were aliens it'd be the F-22s that were taken down.
We’ll find out soon. If they announce the downed object had an unusual polygonal structure, was made of a metallic substance not previously known to science and seemed to ooze some kind of odourless slime when opened up, then it’ll be time for a new thread header.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
My own theory (probably worth tuppence or less) is that the separation of males and females in the early teen years means that young men never get to learn how to behave around girls and women. When they become young men with all the hormonal rages of late teens and early twenties they have not learnt any self-restraint at all.
Early segregation of the sexes is bad for everyone. We need to rub along together and learn about each other and a sizeable portion of the world needs to learn that women are actually people too.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
That’s a profoundly defamatory slur. I demand you withdraw it.
The reputation of the 17th Cent. demands an apology
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
It would be great news if it were aliens. Much more fun than Chinese surveillance.
Surely it they were aliens it'd be the F-22s that were taken down.
We’ll find out soon. If they announce the downed object had an unusual polygonal structure, was made of a metallic substance not previously known to science and seemed to ooze some kind of odourless slime when opened up, then it’ll be time for a new thread header.
Then it will be time to start worshiping our new WokeTransIlegalImmigrantAlienAI overlords, right?
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He's a hypocrite. He demanded multiple VONC in May and declared there could never be another in Johnson.
He's also stupid.
And he's never really answered the questions on his tax affairs.
Apart from that, I have nothing against him.
I didn't mind him as a backbencher with a slightly odd style and focus on arcane procedural matters. Being eccentric but with civil mannerisms is not unpleasant, even if you disagree with someone's views - he was not hated at that time in fact.
I do question LuckyGuy's interpretation of him as competent - whenever he didn't like something he would literally invent in his head some new rule and then claim it to be some grand constitutional position. Given he was dead wrong in those situations (such as when claiming winning a VONC but not by enough meant someone should be obliged to resign - not simply that he thought it a good idea - or by being more radical than most socialist MPs by claiming we have effectively a presidential system and therefore it was not proper for MPs to remove the PM - again, not saying it was the wrong thing to do, but that it should not be allowed) he was either lying, or he was not competent about what he was talking about.
He's also quite rude (being superficially civil does not prevent that) in how he ignores and dismisses views and those he opposes, something I dislike whoever does it - very happy to criticise the Rayners and co when they slag off opponents like teenagers.
Yes, I do dislike him and that must be taken into account when assessing my own view of him as it is not unbiased, but also bear in mind that Boris Johnson did not trust Rees-Mogg with a government department. One of his biggest supporters and not unpopular in the party, and he declined to give him real responsibilities, making him Leader of the House - a job scheduling the work of real Cabinet Ministers - and then a Minister of State position he elevated to Cabinet in his last year.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
That wasn't free sex, it was rape.
Well that’s the point. Things were not noble in the olden days.
I was reading the transcript of a recent police interview yesterday when the accused expressed bewilderment about the idea that you could have rape in a relationship. He genuinely did not understand it. For him a relationship meant that the woman was available to him for sex at all times, awake or asleep. It is actually quite disturbing that men can actually think that after wasting 12 or more years occasionally attending school and supposedly being educated. But they do.
How many members of the jury would agree with the accused?
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He's a hypocrite. He demanded multiple VONC in May and declared there could never be another in Johnson.
He's also stupid.
And he's never really answered the questions on his tax affairs.
"F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back 'limited' information about the object.
But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.
Some pilots said the object 'interfered with their sensors' on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said."
Aaannnddd...
there's another unidentified craft in the skies, this time above northern Canada: CTV News:
"The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) [a combined USA-Canadian command] says it is monitoring a high-altitude airborne object flying over Northern Canada."
“did not appear to be manned” doesn’t sound quite certain enough given that they went and shot it down?
"Spy agencies report hundreds more UFO sightings since 2021
Many of the over 500 “unidentified aerial phenomena” appear to perform maneuvers that are highly advanced.
In total, 510 “unidentified aerial phenomena” observed in protected airspace or near sensitive facilities have been compiled as of August of last year, according to the report to Congress from the director of national intelligence.
Of those, 366 were gathered since a preliminary assessment was published in 2021 — an increase attributed to a “reduced stigma” around reporting, and a better understanding of the intelligence and safety threats that the phenomena may pose.
More than half of those new sightings — most of which came from Navy and Air Force pilots — exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” according to the report: 26 were characterized as drones; 163 were labeled balloons or “balloon-like entities”; and six were described as “clutter.”
That still leaves 171 sightings, however, some of which “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” the report says. Few other details were provided about these unidentified entities, though the report noted that no U.S. aircraft has ever collided with a UFO, and observing them has caused no adverse health effects so far."
A key feature of the Alaska story is that some US pilots (but not others) reported that the object interfered with their planes' sensors.
There's no suggestion in the 2022 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that any of the objects they were reporting about interfered with sensors. They only say that "a select number of UAP incidents may be attributable to sensor irregularities or variances, such as operator or equipment error."
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Well, maybe genetics is part, maybe a large part of the reason why men are more likely to be violent. But we don't simply act solely on the basis of our genetic inheritance. We also have choices. We can learn to control our violent urges, as many decent men are able to do.
And just as pretty much all societies have been patriarchal, in very many of those societies over many times there have also been movements to control and channel men's urges and to teach and encourage them to behave well, especially to women.
What puzzles me is that a time when we are supposed to believe in equality and be against bad 'isms, like sexism, it seems to be as bad as ever. We pay lip service to equality but the reality seems to be darker in many ways. There is a glorification of violence, of sexual violence, a view that women fundamentally only exist for the benefit of men and not in their own right that makes it harder than it need be for men to rise above their genetic inheritance.
But if you are right and men are basically wolves then yes we will have to restrict their freedoms to stop them being such a nuisance.
Not of all us, please. Those of us who are asexuals are not likely to behave in such a fashion.
Well said, Mr Ydoethur. We are more likely to be victims of predatory, aggressive women.
As a Beta male working in a majority female workplace that is not my experience. Nor for that matter is misogyny. We do get occasional conflicts, but I can't remember one where the sex of the people involved were a factor either way.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He's a hypocrite. He demanded multiple VONC in May and declared there could never be another in Johnson.
He's also stupid.
And he's never really answered the questions on his tax affairs.
Apart from that, I have nothing against him.
You might as well say he's a politician. You can guarantee that those in the PCP urging loyalty to Sunak right now are the ones who were the biggest briefers against Truss.
He doesn't strike me as stupid - he speaks fluently and answers the question. Perhaps he's rubbish at maths.
It's precisely because he is not meant to be stupid that I tend to dislike him more when he says something, like the consitutional examples (which are not even things up for debate, he has just been flat out wrong in a way anyone can find out in 5 minuters), which is so incorrect, because it means he is choosing to mislead, but expects to get away with it because he can speak fluently.
People speak fluent bullshit all the time in politics, but it's not a positive attribute.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
That wasn't free sex, it was rape.
Well that’s the point. Things were not noble in the olden days.
I was reading the transcript of a recent police interview yesterday when the accused expressed bewilderment about the idea that you could have rape in a relationship. He genuinely did not understand it. For him a relationship meant that the woman was available to him for sex at all times, awake or asleep. It is actually quite disturbing that men can actually think that after wasting 12 or more years occasionally attending school and supposedly being educated. But they do.
How many members of the jury would agree with the accused?
I fear the number could be quite high.
It is certainly the case that it is very difficult to get a conviction of a rape that allegedly happened in an ongoing sexual relationship, particularly if the alleged rape has not brought an immediate end to that relationship. Our law frankly tries to hide this by making prior or post sexual history "collateral" and somehow "irrelevant" to the question of whether the complainer consented on the occasion in question but juries are very reluctant to see it that way.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I think this view is more about political sides, particularly related to Brexit. I find him characterful and clearly don't mind his acidulous comments about remainers and assorted lefties. If he spent his days slating Brexit and upsetting Brexit supporters, I'd probably be very annoyed by him.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Speak for yourself! There was no one like JRM at my school. They would have been given a very hard time if they were.
Two examples for Cyclefree to think about: When I was growing up, we boys sometimes heard this story*: A boy comes by for his first date with a girl. He is greeted by her father for a little chat, as would be typical at the time. For some reason the father "just happened" to be cleaning a gun, when the boy came in. Which, as the story was told, made the conversation between the two more serious than it would have been, otherwise.
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
*And I don't doubt that something like it happened from time to time.
(And I have a third, general argument for her that I will save for a later day.)
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I think this view is more about political sides, particularly related to Brexit. I find him characterful and clearly don't mind his acidulous comments about remainers and assorted lefties. If he spent his days slating Brexit and upsetting Brexit supporters, I'd probably be very annoyed by him.
I transitioned to not liking him before I transitioned from supporting Brexit, so whilst that might be partly true it's clearly not the whole story.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I think this view is more about political sides, particularly related to Brexit. I find him characterful and clearly don't mind his acidulous comments about remainers and assorted lefties. If he spent his days slating Brexit and upsetting Brexit supporters, I'd probably be very annoyed by him.
I transitioned to not liking him before I transitioned from supporting Brexit, so whilst that might be partly true it's clearly not the whole story.
But did you self-ID as anti Brexit before you officially transitioned?
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Please learn to read. I did not say he got the nickname for the way he speaks. He got it for his stupid, out-dated and condescending attitudes. Every time he speaks, he spouts nonsense.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
The one time short priced fav for tory leader, you mean?
Two examples for Cyclefree to think about: When I was growing up, we boys sometimes heard this story*: A boy comes by for his first date with a girl. He is greeted by her father for a little chat, as would be typical at the time. For some reason the father "just happened" to be cleaning a gun, when the boy came in. Which, as the story was told, made the conversation between the two more serious than it would have been, otherwise.
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
*And I don't doubt that something like it happened from time to time.
(And I have a third, general argument for her that I will save for a later day.)
There's a scene in Bad Boys II, which admittedly I did laugh at whilst watching it in the cinema as a teenager, where a boy is at the door to take the daughter of one of the main characters on a date and they do the 'stern cop dad talks to date scene', and the one of the leads literally flashes a gun in his face and also threatens to rape him.
As it was Will Smith's character who as we now know has a hair trigger temper and violence issues it might not be so amusing.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
I don't really see why one can't have a distinctive personal 'brand' (JRM's is clearly that of a traditional upper-middle class gent) and also be good at your job. I don't think JRM's record in the offices he has held really warrants him being put in the same mockery bracket of PB as Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps and Chris Grayling, but he is.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
I don't really see why one can't have a distinctive personal 'brand' - JRM's is clearly that of a traditional upper-middle class gent, and also be good at your job. I don't think JRM's record in the offices he has held really warrants him being put in the same mockery bracket of PB as Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps and Chris Grayling, but he is.
They held actually important offices, so it is hard to judge.
And I don't have an issue with him having a brand if he was good at his job, but as some examples have shown his brand seems to include either lying about or being very wrong about factual matters, expecting to get away with it because his brand is about sounding correct.
There's a scene in Bad Boys II, which admittedly I did laugh at whilst watching it in the cinema as a teenager, where a boy is at the door to take the daughter of one of the main characters on a date and they do the 'stern cop dad talks to date scene', and the one of the leads literally flashes a gun in his face and also threatens to rape him.
As it was Will Smith's character who as we now know has a hair trigger temper and violence issues it might not be so amusing.
And the boy goes on to join the marines, and then marry the girl...
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Please learn to read. I did not say he got the nickname for the way he speaks. He got it for his stupid, out-dated and condescending attitudes. Every time he speaks, he spouts nonsense.
Please don't be so aggressive when we're having a conversation. You have given zero examples of the views you seem to find so repugnant.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
That's probably more true of village life than urban or suburban Britain, where most people live. We are a more class divided society than most European countries, that's just the reality of the situation. I've probably had more experience of the various strata of society than most people have, and it is true that the rich and poor have little contact with or understanding of each other, although both have a reasonable amount of exposure to people in the middle.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
I don't really see why one can't have a distinctive personal 'brand' (JRM's is clearly that of a traditional upper-middle class gent) and also be good at your job. I don't think JRM's record in the offices he has held really warrants him being put in the same mockery bracket of PB as Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps and Chris Grayling, but he is.
Measuring him against that group recalls the old joke personal report
“He holds himself to very low standards and consistently fails to meet them.”
Two examples for Cyclefree to think about: When I was growing up, we boys sometimes heard this story*: A boy comes by for his first date with a girl. He is greeted by her father for a little chat, as would be typical at the time. For some reason the father "just happened" to be cleaning a gun, when the boy came in. Which, as the story was told, made the conversation between the two more serious than it would have been, otherwise.
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
*And I don't doubt that something like it happened from time to time.
(And I have a third, general argument for her that I will save for a later day.)
Hmm. Both rather misogynist attitudes. The father required to defend "the honour" of the daughter from fellow males. It is the law of the jungle.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
A rather nasty piece of work who wallows in class privilege. That's how I see him.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
I don't really see why one can't have a distinctive personal 'brand' - JRM's is clearly that of a traditional upper-middle class gent, and also be good at your job. I don't think JRM's record in the offices he has held really warrants him being put in the same mockery bracket of PB as Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps and Chris Grayling, but he is.
They held actually important offices, so it is hard to judge.
And I don't have an issue with him having a brand if he was good at his job, but as some examples have shown his brand seems to include either lying about or being very wrong about factual matters, expecting to get away with it because his brand is about sounding correct.
Insisting that Boris had to be retained and that May had to go, and misrepresenting the parliamentary convention to support his arguments isn't great bahaviour, but it seems a slightly threadbare reason to perma-dislike an MP. But hey, we all have things that infuriate us more than others.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Please learn to read. I did not say he got the nickname for the way he speaks. He got it for his stupid, out-dated and condescending attitudes. Every time he speaks, he spouts nonsense.
Besides, if he actually talked like a 17th century politician he'd probably be timed out by the Speaker when giving a speech. Brevity was not a virtue then.
They could be appreciably modern in cynicism though - I always got a kick out of this quote, regarding a questioning letter Cromwell sent Parliament about the Nayler case.
Mr. Downing: My heart is very full in this business. I wish I could propound an expedient to heal this business. We need not dispute our jurisdiction ourselves. There are enough to dispute it. The Instrument of Government is but new, and our jurisdiction is but new too. It is dangerous either for him to question our power, or for us to question his, in matters that are for the public safety: we must both wink. If we should enter upon such a moot point, I dread the consequence. What bred all the former differences, but points of jurisdiction. I would have us to return a short answer to the letter, for I understand not that my Lord Protector does at all question, or desire an account of our jurisdiction. I shall presume that this is no inclination of his Highness to give the least encouragement to the crime. I know it is drawn from him by importunity, rather than any intention to dispute the authority of Parliament. As I said before, we must wink at one another. Should we look into every thing that is done in the council ?
Two examples for Cyclefree to think about: When I was growing up, we boys sometimes heard this story*: A boy comes by for his first date with a girl. He is greeted by her father for a little chat, as would be typical at the time. For some reason the father "just happened" to be cleaning a gun, when the boy came in. Which, as the story was told, made the conversation between the two more serious than it would have been, otherwise.
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
*And I don't doubt that something like it happened from time to time.
(And I have a third, general argument for her that I will save for a later day.)
Hmm. Both rather misogynist attitudes. The father required to defend "the honour" of the daughter from fellow males. It is the law of the jungle.
True.
Though the lack of a stable, decent, father figure is a consistent feature of the background of those vulnerable to being preyed on by scum such as Epstein.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
Actually, another odd "fashion feature" I noticed over the years was that senior managers, directors and other "upper echelon" types often had trouser legs that were too long and so you got a bunching of trouser legs when there were walking or standing. However, when they sat down, the material pulled up and the leg looked the correct length. These men were often wearing fitted suits or made to measure suits.
People wearing off-the peg suits tended to have correct leg measurements when standing and ankles and socks on display when sitting.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I think this view is more about political sides, particularly related to Brexit. I find him characterful and clearly don't mind his acidulous comments about remainers and assorted lefties. If he spent his days slating Brexit and upsetting Brexit supporters, I'd probably be very annoyed by him.
I transitioned to not liking him before I transitioned from supporting Brexit, so whilst that might be partly true it's clearly not the whole story.
I certainly hope not. Losing your balls on Brexit is one thing - allowing such a lapse of judgement to colour your views of all politicians is quite another.
I think JRM’s most obnoxious statement was probably in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire.
“Discussing the recent Grenfell Tower fire inquiry, Rees-Mogg claimed the victims lacked “common sense” because they didn’t flee the burning building. He said to the presenter: “I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do and it’s such a tragedy that didn’t happen.””
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
So you have seen no evidence on the question, but that makes you nearly certain of your conclusion? Have you any idea how ridiculous that statement is?
I have no evidence but I am nearly certain of the answer...
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
Whether it is an affectation or not (I find his penchant for often wearing suit jackets way too big for him to be odd, as it does not fit the caricature of the well put together upper class gentleman), it's a personal style which along with his archaic mannerisms can be lightly charming. If he had not been in a position of authority (albeit rather limited authority).
People wearing off-the peg suits tended to have correct leg measurements when standing and ankles and socks on display when sitting.
I know I am sounding like a broken record on this. But still. We can add the TSSA union as another place with an appalling culture when it comes to women.
The number of reports would fill a sizeable library at this rate. I wonder if anyone ever reads them.
- Parliament - The army - The air force - The London fire brigade and other fire brigades - The police - The NHS - The Labour Party - The TSSA
And those are the ones we know about.
So we can divide organisations by their status regarding sexual harassment into
- Found out - Not found out. Yet
It is not hard to treat people, whoever they are, well. It is not hard for men to treat women well. It really isn't. "Do unto others...." for instance and a bit of basic empathy.
Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act. And if they choose to act in the way that far too many men do, that is down to their individual responsibility. The culture helps create a sort of ethical blindness, a sort of boiling the frog syndrome. But ultimately each individual has responsibility for their own behaviour and a conscience and should be ashamed of behaving in the ways described in these endless reports.
I am sick of this. I am sick of hearing about more organisations treating their staff, especially their female staff, like shit. I am sick of reading the same things over and over again in reports. I am sick of hearing insincere apologies and the "lessons will be learned" cliche. I am sick of hearing that it is all very hard. It bloody well isn't hard to behave well, with consideration, politeness and empathy.
But. But (and I say this with trepidation because I’ll be treading into a range of types of dangerous territory here), what if “ Men are not animals, obliged to follow their urges. They are human beings, able to make choices about how they act” is not entirely true?
What if men are evolutionarily and genetically predisposed to violence, including violence against women. And therefore we can’t rely on appealing to some better nature to prevent violence in future?
There seem to be 3 explanations for the predominance of male violence, against their own sex and the opposite sex:
1. It’s in their genes. There were evolutionary fitness reasons for male humans to behave in a warlike manner, and to commit sexual violence, spurred on by a different hormonal chemistry 3. It’s cultural: we live in a patriarchy which celebrates or at least excuses violent male behaviour, so men feel cultural pressure to behave according to type (but why? is there an evolutionary reason?) 4. There is no cultural or genetic effect here, we are all able to exercise free choice; men just happen - coincidentally - to do more of this shit
3 seems unlikely. 2 is the most common explanation in the West. But why do we see the same patterns in just about every society, throughout history? Why is almost every human society patriarchal?
What if actually we need to accept males are a genetically more dangerous group in this particular species, and restrain their freedoms accordingly? Sure, there are gentle (“feeble”) men who defy the genes - I’m probably one of them. But are they like Ferdinand the bull who refused to fight and preferred to sniff flowers until a bee stung his behind? In other words freaks departing from an otherwise violent norm.
You will say this is a cop out as it denies personal responsibility. A fair point, but I still come back to that question: can there really be an explanation for male violence that doesn’t take into account genetics?
Contrary to the fantasies of incels, patriarchal societies are often governed by very strict codes of conduct that rule male behaviour towards women.
If we lived in an Islamic society, and did things like sending dick pics to women, flashing at them at work, making endless lewd comments, telling them how much we’d like to rape them, posting online fantasies about torture and rape, we would get into extremely hot water.
A young man almost certainly finds it easier to have consequence-free sex with young women in modern Western societies than at any point in history.
But there is something nasty in human nature that enjoys cruelty and degradation.
I think we’ve dropped one set of ethics that governed male behaviour towards women (the pre 1960’s) without putting another in their place. Added to which is a dreadful corporate and public sector culture that holds no one to account for their actions.
If you look at patriarchal Islamic societies like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, rates of sexual assault are through the roof. It is basically impossible for a young woman to travel on Egyptian public transport and not be groped.
Indeed. The chivalric code of traditional societies hides a whole load of accepted but deeply abusive behaviour.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
I think JRM’s most obnoxious statement was probably in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire.
“Discussing the recent Grenfell Tower fire inquiry, Rees-Mogg claimed the victims lacked “common sense” because they didn’t flee the burning building. He said to the presenter: “I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do and it’s such a tragedy that didn’t happen.””
I listened to the whole interview, and I completely disagree that the statement was obnoxious. It is utterly tragic that the victims were advised to remain in their flats, when their common sense (in its rawest form) would have been screaming at them to get out.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
That's probably more true of village life than urban or suburban Britain, where most people live. We are a more class divided society than most European countries, that's just the reality of the situation. I've probably had more experience of the various strata of society than most people have, and it is true that the rich and poor have little contact with or understanding of each other, although both have a reasonable amount of exposure to people in the middle.
It is definitely a British thing. It is less prevalent in Ireland (north or south) and also almost anywhere else I have been. Personally I blame the institution of the monarchy for fuelling class division. It props up the pyramid of social snobbery by offering a standard of who is better in society by simple proximity to the monarch through family or royal appointment.
Jacob Rees-Mogg comes across as quite nasty, partisan and not actually intellectually curious.
He achieved nothing in high office.
Fuck knows what deep psychological disturbance lies beneath his frock coat. I presume he was raped as a youth by his chauffeur.
I doubt it's anything that interesting. He's just a basic over-entitled prick. I remember reading about how he had been given some shares in a company by his rich dad when he was a kid, and turned up at the AGM to berate the management because the dividends weren't high enough. There are two Viz characters - Spoilt Bastard and Victoria Dad. Rees Mogg somehow went straight from the first to the second, with nothing in between. It's not even worth being irritated by him, except in how badly it reflects on us as a country that he is a senior person in public life.
I think JRM’s most obnoxious statement was probably in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire.
“Discussing the recent Grenfell Tower fire inquiry, Rees-Mogg claimed the victims lacked “common sense” because they didn’t flee the burning building. He said to the presenter: “I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do and it’s such a tragedy that didn’t happen.””
I listened to the whole interview, and I completely disagree that the statement was obnoxious. It is utterly tragic that the victims were advised to remain in their flats, when their common sense (in it's rawest form) would have been screaming at them to get out.
He very clearly said in that interview that of course someone with more intelligence like himself or the interviewer would have ignored the fire brigade. The implication was that the people in the tower were too stupid to act in their own interests.
Two examples for Cyclefree to think about: When I was growing up, we boys sometimes heard this story*: A boy comes by for his first date with a girl. He is greeted by her father for a little chat, as would be typical at the time. For some reason the father "just happened" to be cleaning a gun, when the boy came in. Which, as the story was told, made the conversation between the two more serious than it would have been, otherwise.
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
*And I don't doubt that something like it happened from time to time.
(And I have a third, general argument for her that I will save for a later day.)
So. In order for a boy to behave decently towards women, he needs to have the idea implanted that he may be shot by the Father to assert his property rights? And you think that is good behaviour modelling? America truly is a different land.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
He talks complete and utter nonsense every time he speaks. His nickname of "The Minister for the 17th Century" was not awarded by PB, but by those who know him.
I like the way he speaks. What's so great about 21st century oration?
Thing is we all knew someone like him at school. Young fogey. Pocket watch, waistcoat and affected accent. It’s a phase, and they usually grow out of if, but JRM appears not to have.
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I think this view is more about political sides, particularly related to Brexit. I find him characterful and clearly don't mind his acidulous comments about remainers and assorted lefties. If he spent his days slating Brexit and upsetting Brexit supporters, I'd probably be very annoyed by him.
I transitioned to not liking him before I transitioned from supporting Brexit, so whilst that might be partly true it's clearly not the whole story.
Both excellent shifts if I may say so, related or not.
Jacob Rees-Mogg comes across as quite nasty, partisan and not actually intellectually curious.
He achieved nothing in high office.
Fuck knows what deep psychological disturbance lies beneath his frock coat. I presume he was raped as a youth by his chauffeur.
I doubt it's anything that interesting. He's just a basic over-entitled prick. I remember reading about how he had been given some shares in a company by his rich dad when he was a kid, and turned up at the AGM to berate the management because the dividends weren't high enough. There are two Viz characters - Spoilt Bastard and Victoria Dad. Rees Mogg somehow went straight from the first to the second, with nothing in between. It's not even worth being irritated by him, except in how badly it reflects on us as a country that he is a senior person in public life.
I maintain that anyone who talks, acts and dresses like an absurd pastiche is psychologically damaged in some way.
The other addiction that holds this country back is nostalgia. Left or right, choose your poison, but myths about the sixties or ww2 make us fat and lazy. We are quite content to rest on the laurels of others.
I don't think nostalgia is a peculiarly British problem, but anecdotally it does feel as though we have little sense of what positively want, and so are very conservsative and seek to just revisit old battles and policies, with only tokenistic tweaks otherwise even as we shy away from anything dramatic.
Nostalgia is clearly not unique to Britain, but we are drunk on it. It’s everywhere. Brexit was an exercise in nostalgia. Scottish independence is an exercise in nostalgia. Corbyn was an exercise in nostalgia.
You don’t travel much, do you?
Every single serious nation on earth is, by its nature, an exercise in nostalgia
Because it says: We are these people, who live here in this particular place, as we have done for X years, and we do these things, as we have done for generations, and this makes us different to the people next door
That IS a nation. It is nostalgia turned into politics. How else do you define it?
Any every serious nation is absolutely soaked in this stuff. UK, America, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Denmark, Italy, Thailand, Holland, Mexico - even newer nations like Canada and Oz and South Africa. They are all “drunken exercises in nostalgia”
Perhaps we'd be better off with only silly nations.
In all seriousness I don't think so. A sense of shared identity at a more local level than 'all humanity' may be necessary to mobilise groups to achieve great things. Yes it can often be misused, but that's the peril of identity for you.
I'm very skeptical of there being such a thing as a national character or identity.
I tend to disagree. It won’t be for everyone but there is a group identity. Overlaid on that is your own character. For some people, perhaps like your good self, that overwhelms everything else, so you don’t understand what being English, or Scottish, or Danish means to some. A bit like me, as a 100% straight male cannot understand how a man can be attracted to another man, but I accept that is no the case for all men.
But a 'nation' is such a large and diverse entity. The differences between individuals within it absolutely dwarf those between its population as a whole and those of other nations. So I don't think it has much meaning to talk about national identity or character. I think it's mainly just a technique to communicate seductive falsehoods. Often harmless but sometimes not.
I don't think I agree with you, at least not completely. A nation is like a family. You don't choose your family, you might love them or hate them, you might much prefer the company of your friends and have way more in common with them, but you still have a history and a kinship with your family that you can't deny or ignore. Sometimes a family becomes toxic and unhealthy, and sometimes nationhood can be twisted too, but in the main it is simply a natural and healthy way for people to organise themselves, just like families are.
If someone belongs to an exploited class and has been exploited all their life - which accounts for a majority of the population - why should they buy into the idea of commonality with the local members of the ruling class? They're not friends. Those on opposite sides of the divide don't treat each other as equals or give a damn about each other or invite the other into their home. Karl Marx was right: the working class have no country. Class hatred is especially strong in Britain - flowing downward in society, not upward. Screw country - it's just a brand. That said, of course culture affects personality. To my taste, some places have much sh*ttier cultures than others. Can't see any good in denying I feel that way.
Almost no one in the “Exploited Class” thinks like that. Nationalism always trumps class.
Your point is? The reigning ideas are the ideas imposed by the reigning class. The day nationalism no longer trumps class, the whole exploitative caboodle explodes - and the working class revolution abolishes class.
Happened once in eastern Ukraine. The Makhnovshchina weren't nationalist in the slightest.
Happened in places in Spain.
Have a look at Rojava too, in the present tense.
"Revolution is the only form of 'war' ... in which ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of defeats". (Rosa Luxemburg.)
What's sad is when nationalist nutters think they're being so alpha, often seeking out all-male environments in which they enjoy showing off to other men.
Alphas are a subcategory of betas and they're just as cucky.
Sigmas are where it's at
(And absolutely not those of the racist and sexist
Nick Krauser kind. They're worse than anyone. Krauser was a neo-Nazi the last I heard. A person who thinks they're "sigma" at the same time they are nationalist, racist, and pro-hierarchy is an idiot.)
My point is that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about class conflict.
The working class revolution won’t happen because the working class aren’t interested.
Everything the rulers do as a gang, as a collective, is about class. They know that. You can't have class without class conflict. It's not about the As versus the Bs, chosen one morning at random.
In Britain, the culture in many parts of society is also about class to an exceptional degree, even when in principle it doesn't have to be. Exclusionism is written right the way through British culture as if it were a stick of rock.
Most working class people haven't got a clue how anyone in the ruling class thinks, for the simple reason that they haven't met any. The richest person they ever meet on a one-to-one basis is probably a local GP or dentist (or used to meet, in the case of the former).
What mindless drivel, which could only be said by someone with no knowledge of British society. Britain is a country of class intermingling and has been noted as such back to the middle ages. There are pubs in every county where lawyers and plumbers drink together. This isn't like Putin the gollum, who embezzles billions from the Russian poor, and then enjoys it on his secluded estates.
It's not actually wrong. Lots of thick poshos in positions of power and cocking up because mummy was shagging the right man nine months before giving birth.
What it is, is backwards. It's not about working class not understanding the rulers. We understand them very well. They're useless scum floating on the top.
It's rather the ruling class have no idea how normal people think, because they never meet us.
Must give them a hell of a shock if they ever do meet people they rule.
Its nonsense. Lets start by defining terms. What income level by do you mean by "ruling class"? To be a whole class, it must be a reasonable number of people. So lets say its the income brackets of people that become MPs. As an MP, you earn 85k a year. A bit more for junior ministerial positions, so lets say 100k. I don't think most of them have pay cuts to join parliament.
Do you really think people on 100k never mix with those earning 30-40k, the typical salary? People earning 100k go to pubs, go to restaurants, go to village fetes.
I don't mean income. I mean those who make decisions. Some are actually on quite low salaries. But most of them seem to be there despite their ineptitude rather than because of their talent.
If you think that, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg got into Parliament because of his intellect and high character, or Amanda Spielman has had any of her last three jobs on merit I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's time some of us reassessed JRM. I can't actually see what he did wrong except annoy civil servants (What's wrong with that?), and recline for dramatic effect in the HOC. He was widely mocked as 'Minister for Brexit opportunities', for not finding any, but it is now known that he created the retained EU law bill to make the most of just such opportunities. He seems fairly competent. I think some dislike him for being posh and rich, and others dislike him for posh and rich and having the nerve not to be a remainer.
A rather nasty piece of work who wallows in class privilege. That's how I see him.
That would make me like him more. We should all wallow in our privileges.
Jacob Rees-Mogg comes across as quite nasty, partisan and not actually intellectually curious.
He achieved nothing in high office.
Fuck knows what deep psychological disturbance lies beneath his frock coat. I presume he was raped as a youth by his chauffeur.
I doubt it's anything that interesting. He's just a basic over-entitled prick. I remember reading about how he had been given some shares in a company by his rich dad when he was a kid, and turned up at the AGM to berate the management because the dividends weren't high enough. There are two Viz characters - Spoilt Bastard and Victoria Dad. Rees Mogg somehow went straight from the first to the second, with nothing in between. It's not even worth being irritated by him, except in how badly it reflects on us as a country that he is a senior person in public life.
I maintain that anyone who talks, acts and dresses like an absurd pastiche is psychologically damaged in some way.
He went to a boy's boarding school so that's probably a given.
I think JRM’s most obnoxious statement was probably in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire.
“Discussing the recent Grenfell Tower fire inquiry, Rees-Mogg claimed the victims lacked “common sense” because they didn’t flee the burning building. He said to the presenter: “I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do and it’s such a tragedy that didn’t happen.””
I listened to the whole interview, and I completely disagree that the statement was obnoxious. It is utterly tragic that the victims were advised to remain in their flats, when their common sense (in it's rawest form) would have been screaming at them to get out.
He very clearly said in that interview that of course someone with more intelligence like himself or the interviewer would have ignored the fire brigade. The implication was that the people in the tower were too stupid to act in their own interests.
Too stupid, no. Too beholden to authority, self-evidently yes.
Braverman’s tweet, referring to the “alleged behaviour of some asylum seekers” is a typical dog-whistle.
You have to wonder what motivates her.
I absolutely detest her. She’s a stain on humanity . And the annoying smirks she pulls , utterly vile woman who gets off on the misery of others .
I haven’t noticed the smirk. I thought Patel was the smirker.
Braverman strikes me as a rather thick, excessively self-regarding, and the sort of person who loves to exercise petty authority over others.
In another world, she’s be a mid-level HR manager.
Funny how time changes one’s perspective. I rather respect Priti Patel now. She seems a lot more intelligent, somewhat more nuanced and independent thinking than many of her right wing bedfellows. Still don’t like her politics, but at least she seems to have a mind of her own.
Comments
Chief Constable Savage is doing well. He’s passed all his diversity courses - got 100% on every multiple choice exam. Got any array of awards in a glass cabinet for community relations. A probationer polishes them for him, once a week. Soft cloth, not too much abrasive….
Savage now supervises the arresting of people who order their coffee black.
Black people, that is.
As for consequence free sex: just read Tess if the D’Urbervilles.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
Anyway they shot the Canadian one down, too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64614098
Twice.
He's also stupid.
And he's never really answered the questions on his tax affairs.
Apart from that, I have nothing against him.
It does remind me of one of Ben Elton's lesser books, Blast from the Past, with a military officer whose career mirrored that of one of the main characters, who was meant to be a decent officer, as he kept rising through the ranks thanks to general clueless inoffensiveness and avoiding scandal.
IIRC in the end he becomes Chief of the General Staff and then president.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-system-imperial-measures-consultation-brexit
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/12/spy-agencies-report-hundreds-ufo-sightings-00077758
"Spy agencies report hundreds more UFO sightings since 2021
Many of the over 500 “unidentified aerial phenomena” appear to perform maneuvers that are highly advanced.
In total, 510 “unidentified aerial phenomena” observed in protected airspace or near sensitive facilities have been compiled as of August of last year, according to the report to Congress from the director of national intelligence.
Of those, 366 were gathered since a preliminary assessment was published in 2021 — an increase attributed to a “reduced stigma” around reporting, and a better understanding of the intelligence and safety threats that the phenomena may pose.
More than half of those new sightings — most of which came from Navy and Air Force pilots — exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” according to the report: 26 were characterized as drones; 163 were labeled balloons or “balloon-like entities”; and six were described as “clutter.”
That still leaves 171 sightings, however, some of which “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities,” the report says. Few other details were provided about these unidentified entities, though the report noted that no U.S. aircraft has ever collided with a UFO, and observing them has caused no adverse health effects so far."
He doesn't strike me as stupid - he speaks fluently and answers the question. Perhaps he's rubbish at maths.
Early segregation of the sexes is bad for everyone. We need to rub along together and learn about each other and a sizeable portion of the world needs to learn that women are actually people too.
The reputation of the 17th Cent. demands an apology
He’s deeply unappealing and decidedly pastiche but it’s hard to take him too seriously.
I do question LuckyGuy's interpretation of him as competent - whenever he didn't like something he would literally invent in his head some new rule and then claim it to be some grand constitutional position. Given he was dead wrong in those situations (such as when claiming winning a VONC but not by enough meant someone should be obliged to resign - not simply that he thought it a good idea - or by being more radical than most socialist MPs by claiming we have effectively a presidential system and therefore it was not proper for MPs to remove the PM - again, not saying it was the wrong thing to do, but that it should not be allowed) he was either lying, or he was not competent about what he was talking about.
He's also quite rude (being superficially civil does not prevent that) in how he ignores and dismisses views and those he opposes, something I dislike whoever does it - very happy to criticise the Rayners and co when they slag off opponents like teenagers.
Yes, I do dislike him and that must be taken into account when assessing my own view of him as it is not unbiased, but also bear in mind that Boris Johnson did not trust Rees-Mogg with a government department. One of his biggest supporters and not unpopular in the party, and he declined to give him real responsibilities, making him Leader of the House - a job scheduling the work of real Cabinet Ministers - and then a Minister of State position he elevated to Cabinet in his last year.
I fear the number could be quite high.
Rishi Sunak is a moron.
He's a just a ***t!
There's no suggestion in the 2022 report from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that any of the objects they were reporting about interfered with sensors. They only say that "a select number of UAP incidents may be attributable to sensor irregularities or variances, such as operator or equipment error."
People speak fluent bullshit all the time in politics, but it's not a positive attribute.
Second: I have seen no evidence on the question, but I am nearly certain that very few of Jeffrey Epstein's victims had fathers in their lives.
*And I don't doubt that something like it happened from time to time.
(And I have a third, general argument for her that I will save for a later day.)
As it was Will Smith's character who as we now know has a hair trigger temper and violence issues it might not be so amusing.
https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1624461148681654275
And I don't have an issue with him having a brand if he was good at his job, but as some examples have shown his brand seems to include either lying about or being very wrong about factual matters, expecting to get away with it because his brand is about sounding correct.
I can almost imagine what antifrank would have written in a thread header about it.
“He holds himself to very low standards and consistently fails to meet them.”
He achieved nothing in high office.
Fuck knows what deep psychological disturbance lies beneath his frock coat. I presume he was raped as a youth by his chauffeur.
That is taken for granted for all posts.
They could be appreciably modern in cynicism though - I always got a kick out of this quote, regarding a questioning letter Cromwell sent Parliament about the Nayler case.
Mr. Downing: My heart is very full in this business. I wish I could propound an expedient to heal this business. We need not dispute our jurisdiction ourselves. There are enough to dispute it. The Instrument of Government is but new, and our jurisdiction is but new too. It is dangerous either for him to question our power, or for us to question his, in matters that are for the public safety: we must both wink. If we should enter upon such a moot point, I dread the consequence. What bred all the former differences, but points of jurisdiction. I would have us to return a short answer to the letter, for I understand not that my Lord Protector does at all question, or desire an account of our jurisdiction. I shall presume that this is no inclination of his Highness to give the least encouragement to the crime. I know it is drawn from him by importunity, rather than any intention to dispute the authority of Parliament. As I said before, we must wink at one another. Should we look into every thing that is done in the council ?
Though the lack of a stable, decent, father figure is a consistent feature of the background of those vulnerable to being preyed on by scum such as Epstein.
People wearing off-the peg suits tended to have correct leg measurements when standing and ankles and socks on display when sitting.
“Discussing the recent Grenfell Tower fire inquiry, Rees-Mogg claimed the victims lacked “common sense” because they didn’t flee the burning building. He said to the presenter: “I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do and it’s such a tragedy that didn’t happen.””
I have no evidence but I am nearly certain of the answer...
You could say that by having these talks, brexiters are facing reality - but remainers attending are facing reality too, that rejoin is dead.
You have to wonder what motivates her.
It is a cancer on society.
I remember reading about how he had been given some shares in a company by his rich dad when he was a kid, and turned up at the AGM to berate the management because the dividends weren't high enough.
There are two Viz characters - Spoilt Bastard and Victoria Dad. Rees Mogg somehow went straight from the first to the second, with nothing in between. It's not even worth being irritated by him, except in how badly it reflects on us as a country that he is a senior person in public life.
I would love it for JRM to be Tory leader.
Bring it on
And you think that is good behaviour modelling?
America truly is a different land.
Braverman strikes me as a rather thick, excessively self-regarding, and the sort of person who loves to exercise petty authority over others.
In another world, she’s be a mid-level HR manager.