new cold war?

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think that the issue of maritime boundaries is one that will be more and more significant in coming years. Some of the fields from which it will become viable to extract resources in the future are in areas on or around hazy boundaries which it has hitherto been considered unimportant to properly sort out.
Didn't Australia strong-arm East Timor in to some deal for oil in a related case?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Is fascinating how the conservative and liberal wings of the liberal democratic capitalist order, each are pitted against one, and slouch toward the other, of the two competing orders/ideologies of the 20th century: communism and fascism.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Communist here I suspect is little more than a conservative scare word, even more so than fascist is a liberal scare word.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Not really, just the Bernie sect pointing toward socialism, or at least socialist democracy.
Although really I suppose I'm thinking of leftists (and far leftists at that), rather than liberals. I guess you could say that liberals have more communtarian values on average than conservatives here, the latter of whom having more libertarian values on average. But I'm also not sure how useful (or accurate) these generalizations are.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Communist here I suspect is little more than a conservative scare word, even more so than fascist is a liberal scare word.
Sanders-style social democracy isn't actually socialism, though, and it sure as hell isn't communism.

Whereas the Republicans are becoming more openly fascist all the time.

This sort of "both sides" thinking appeals to the likes of Gus, for whom centre-right mainstream Democrats and far-right MAGA psychos are diametric opposites, each equally far from an imagined "centre."
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
From my perspective, any far-left equivalent (in terms of distance from center) of the far-right MAGA crowd is far less dangerous. But then again, if I subscribed to the channels that demonize whatever para-academic Antifa crowd, my perspective may reflect such.

And re: communism, I don't know of any mainstream US politician that gets anywhere near my conception of actual communism. I think its mainly a scare word for the liberty-loving, in order to galvanize partisan right-wing support.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I think I was conflating actual communism with communitarian and welfare opinions, which seem to be to be more of an indicator of left-wing contingencies than right-wing. But its as much cultural as political proper, at least in my mind. IE to what extent you think the state should take from haves and give to have nots. Not sure if this is really an area to be making analytic, quantitative statements, but I'm just voicing my current perspective on things.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
In that light, it makes sense to me why wealthy libertarian capitalists are able to appeal to poor libertarian workers, despite it being "against their own interests" from a rational perspective. Must just be enough of a subset of workers who place certain cultural values above rational economic judgements, and it makes sense to me. I disagree of course, but it makes sense.

Lately I've been thinking of the whole libertarian MAGA big lie crowd as "knowing the truth" and the technocratic (qua expert-trusting) democracy-trusting crowd as "understanding the facts" - that is, a sort of epistemic rift whereby the former side trusts their gut over their rationality, and the latter arguably vice versa.

Of course, I also see an intellectual asymmetry here, but my noocratic tendencies I feel have been made abundantly clear around these parts.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I point out the intellectual asymmetry to dispel any notion that I see these two sides as equipotently amounting to any kind of dualistic balance. I think in the long term (IE on the order of centuries, climate permitting) the likes of MAGA will fall by the waysides of the evolutionary fitness, and liberal, globalized technocracy will thrive.
 
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