I quoted the whole thing because the structure is central to the thesis. He’s comparing the invasions of Vietnam, Iraq and so on with the revolutions that took down Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. That South Africa and Rhodesia were taken down and the Vietcong were not is perfectly true. That this is evidence the American government spent more effort opposing Apartheid than the Vietcong is something else entirely—conspiracy theory. Not merely in that it proposes a conspiracy but in that it does not bother to argue for one, the state of the world is evidence for the existence of a body that wanted it that way- except where it isn’t, in the case of Israel.
That said, I quoted the whole thing to provide context, the claim I find impossible to grasp is that the US was not really opposed to the USSR and is not really allied with Israel. This requires either a definition of the US government that is separate from the people that actually run it, an assertion that the people who appear to be in charge don’t really run it, or that they secretly hate Israel and love communism.
Not merely in that it proposes a conspiracy but in that it does not bother to argue for one
Moldbug does argue for his controversial analyses of world events at enormous length. Here he is mentioning some of his conclusions without restating his arguments. It doesn’t mean he didn’t bother to argue. What it does mean is that he’s a demanding writer, who expects his readers to spend a lot of time familiarizing themselves with his arguments. If that sounds like he’s expecting too much—that is, if you think he should prove that he’s not a nutcase before you devote months to reading his blog chronologically from 2007 through the present, which is more or less what you need to do to gather together the threads of his argument, then there you have your explanation as to why he’s not very widely read.
Moldbug did recognize this problem and at one point he attempted to recap his argument in condensed form, but even that condensed introduction to his argument is spread over many very long blog posts.
He furthermore places barriers in the way of his reader by writing in a colorful and circuitous style which I presume is his attempt to imitate writers that he admires, such as Carlyle. It doesn’t make for easy reading.
the claim I find impossible to grasp is that the US was not really opposed to the USSR and is not really allied with Israel.
I don’t recall Moldbug ever claiming this, and taken strictly it would contradict one of his main recurring themes, which is that the US government is not a monolithic entity, though maybe he does speak of the US government as a monolithic entity (if he does, he is speaking loosely). What I recall Moldbug claiming is that the US government is not a monolithic entity, and that one can usefully roughly divide it into two warring factions, one of which dominates the State Department among other things, the other of which tends more to dominate the Pentagon. If we look at the quote here he writes, “their friendship is only with one side of the American political system”, referring to this divide I’ve mentioned.
the claim I find impossible to grasp is that the US was not really opposed to the USSR and is not really allied with Israel.
The US demands that Israel make territorial and monetary concessions on land long ago acquired and settled by Jews. It made no similar demand against the USSR, except for those Soviet acquisitions that were so recent as to still be in play.
For the situation to be comparable, for the US to have treated the USSR and Israel equally as enemies, the US should have derecognized and actively resisted the Soviet acquisition of East Germany, in the fashion that it has derecognized and actively resisted the Jewish acquisition of Jerusalem.
Or as an alternate explanation, the US was afraid of the USSR and thus was more careful about what demands it made of it, but it’s not particularly afraid of Israel.
Have you sought for alternate explanations and checked to see how evidence update the probablity of each upwards or downwards?
That this is evidence the American government spent more effort opposing Apartheid than the Vietcong is something else entirely—conspiracy theory.
The US sought to overthrow its right wing enemies, such as Rhodesia and so forth, replacing their regimes with utterly different regimes, but generally sought to maintain its left wing enemies in power, while placing pressure on them to moderate their ways, go along with the consensus, and stop trying to disturb the status quo, like a squabble within a marriage, rather than a divorce.
Even on those rare, infrequent, and dramatic occasions when the US did want to overthrow its left wing enemies, as for example the Taliban, the State Department clearly did not want to overthrow them, eventually got its way and installed regimes almost indistinguishable from the originals. The current Afghan regime is just the Taliban light, far closer to the Taliban in its ethnicity and its state imposed theology than to the Northern Alliance.
So… enemies that enjoyed the support of the USSR or China largely survived, at least until the USSR’s dissolution itself. While enemies of America that were also enemies of the USSR and China, were largely defeated.
Basically all you’re saying is that few countries could stand without support from some superpower.
This isn’t saying much that’s suprising. But by talking as if the difference is between right-wing enemies and left-wing enemies, instead of enemies that didn’t have superpower backing, and enemies that did have superpower backing, you make it look like a bigger conspiracy than it actually is.
I quoted the whole thing because the structure is central to the thesis. He’s comparing the invasions of Vietnam, Iraq and so on with the revolutions that took down Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.
But obviously Rhodesia and South Africa were not taken down by revolutions. Rhodesia was taken down by foreign invasion and terrorism from outside Rhodesia, terror conducted by black people but sponsored and funded by white people from outside Africa. South Africa yielded not to violence, but to moral pressure and political correctness.
So you are contradicting Mencius’ version of history, with a politically correct version of history that is transparently false, that no one genuinely believes, even if lots of people pretend to believe it for fear of the consequences of doubting it.
While Mencius’ version could be false, the fact that it differs from a transparently false version of politically correct history is not reason to doubt it.
That this is evidence the American government spent more effort opposing Apartheid than the Vietcong is something else entirely—conspiracy theory
The US spent precisely zero effort taking down the Hanoi regime, making its vast expenditure of effort against the Vietcong completely pointless and ineffectual.
The US sponsored terror against the Rhodesian regime in its efforts to overthrow it, something it has not done against communist or Islamic enemies, unless you count the Contras and the sons of Iraq as terrorists, which is stretching things.
Rather than comparing resources expended on war, which is an unfair comparison since fascist regimes have been insignificant after the fall of Nazi Germany, let us compare qualms of conscience. When fighting communist enemies, dreadfully concerned to make friends and not offend anyone, when fighting fascist enemies, kill them all, let God sort them out. When fighting communist or Islamic enemies, all the experts agree the thing to do is to win hearts and minds, when fighting fascist enemies, all the experts agree that the thing to do is to grab them by the balls and rip those balls off.
Hence Mencius description of those wars as civil wars, fought in a manner that shows that they were friends before, and hoped to be friends after, while the point of conflict with those dreadful fascists was to destroy them. Often, as in the Vietnam war, and arguably the Afghan war, the concern for not offending people paralyzed the war effort.
Wars with left enemies were like squabbles within a marriage. You would not want the squabble to escalate to divorce. If the US had really wanted to win in South Vietnam, would have had to win in North Vietnam, or credibly threaten to do so if the North Vietnamese did not back off. Hence, civil war, family squabble. The objective with fascist enemies was to destroy them. The objective with communist and Islamist enemies was to get them to converge. When communism fell, the CIA was not only shocked and incredulous, but also dismayed. Obama wants Islam to come resemble the WCC. That might arguably be a reasonable plan, but it is not the plan that was applied to Rhodesia or the Greek colonels—nor even the plan applied to our supposed allies, the Northern Alliance.
I quoted the whole thing because the structure is central to the thesis. He’s comparing the invasions of Vietnam, Iraq and so on with the revolutions that took down Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. That South Africa and Rhodesia were taken down and the Vietcong were not is perfectly true. That this is evidence the American government spent more effort opposing Apartheid than the Vietcong is something else entirely—conspiracy theory. Not merely in that it proposes a conspiracy but in that it does not bother to argue for one, the state of the world is evidence for the existence of a body that wanted it that way- except where it isn’t, in the case of Israel.
That said, I quoted the whole thing to provide context, the claim I find impossible to grasp is that the US was not really opposed to the USSR and is not really allied with Israel. This requires either a definition of the US government that is separate from the people that actually run it, an assertion that the people who appear to be in charge don’t really run it, or that they secretly hate Israel and love communism.
Moldbug does argue for his controversial analyses of world events at enormous length. Here he is mentioning some of his conclusions without restating his arguments. It doesn’t mean he didn’t bother to argue. What it does mean is that he’s a demanding writer, who expects his readers to spend a lot of time familiarizing themselves with his arguments. If that sounds like he’s expecting too much—that is, if you think he should prove that he’s not a nutcase before you devote months to reading his blog chronologically from 2007 through the present, which is more or less what you need to do to gather together the threads of his argument, then there you have your explanation as to why he’s not very widely read.
Moldbug did recognize this problem and at one point he attempted to recap his argument in condensed form, but even that condensed introduction to his argument is spread over many very long blog posts.
He furthermore places barriers in the way of his reader by writing in a colorful and circuitous style which I presume is his attempt to imitate writers that he admires, such as Carlyle. It doesn’t make for easy reading.
I don’t recall Moldbug ever claiming this, and taken strictly it would contradict one of his main recurring themes, which is that the US government is not a monolithic entity, though maybe he does speak of the US government as a monolithic entity (if he does, he is speaking loosely). What I recall Moldbug claiming is that the US government is not a monolithic entity, and that one can usefully roughly divide it into two warring factions, one of which dominates the State Department among other things, the other of which tends more to dominate the Pentagon. If we look at the quote here he writes, “their friendship is only with one side of the American political system”, referring to this divide I’ve mentioned.
The US demands that Israel make territorial and monetary concessions on land long ago acquired and settled by Jews. It made no similar demand against the USSR, except for those Soviet acquisitions that were so recent as to still be in play.
For the situation to be comparable, for the US to have treated the USSR and Israel equally as enemies, the US should have derecognized and actively resisted the Soviet acquisition of East Germany, in the fashion that it has derecognized and actively resisted the Jewish acquisition of Jerusalem.
Or as an alternate explanation, the US was afraid of the USSR and thus was more careful about what demands it made of it, but it’s not particularly afraid of Israel.
Have you sought for alternate explanations and checked to see how evidence update the probablity of each upwards or downwards?
The US sought to overthrow its right wing enemies, such as Rhodesia and so forth, replacing their regimes with utterly different regimes, but generally sought to maintain its left wing enemies in power, while placing pressure on them to moderate their ways, go along with the consensus, and stop trying to disturb the status quo, like a squabble within a marriage, rather than a divorce.
Even on those rare, infrequent, and dramatic occasions when the US did want to overthrow its left wing enemies, as for example the Taliban, the State Department clearly did not want to overthrow them, eventually got its way and installed regimes almost indistinguishable from the originals. The current Afghan regime is just the Taliban light, far closer to the Taliban in its ethnicity and its state imposed theology than to the Northern Alliance.
In contrast, Rhodesia is utterly destroyed.
So… enemies that enjoyed the support of the USSR or China largely survived, at least until the USSR’s dissolution itself. While enemies of America that were also enemies of the USSR and China, were largely defeated.
Basically all you’re saying is that few countries could stand without support from some superpower.
This isn’t saying much that’s suprising. But by talking as if the difference is between right-wing enemies and left-wing enemies, instead of enemies that didn’t have superpower backing, and enemies that did have superpower backing, you make it look like a bigger conspiracy than it actually is.
But obviously Rhodesia and South Africa were not taken down by revolutions. Rhodesia was taken down by foreign invasion and terrorism from outside Rhodesia, terror conducted by black people but sponsored and funded by white people from outside Africa. South Africa yielded not to violence, but to moral pressure and political correctness.
So you are contradicting Mencius’ version of history, with a politically correct version of history that is transparently false, that no one genuinely believes, even if lots of people pretend to believe it for fear of the consequences of doubting it.
While Mencius’ version could be false, the fact that it differs from a transparently false version of politically correct history is not reason to doubt it.
The US spent precisely zero effort taking down the Hanoi regime, making its vast expenditure of effort against the Vietcong completely pointless and ineffectual.
The US sponsored terror against the Rhodesian regime in its efforts to overthrow it, something it has not done against communist or Islamic enemies, unless you count the Contras and the sons of Iraq as terrorists, which is stretching things.
Rather than comparing resources expended on war, which is an unfair comparison since fascist regimes have been insignificant after the fall of Nazi Germany, let us compare qualms of conscience. When fighting communist enemies, dreadfully concerned to make friends and not offend anyone, when fighting fascist enemies, kill them all, let God sort them out. When fighting communist or Islamic enemies, all the experts agree the thing to do is to win hearts and minds, when fighting fascist enemies, all the experts agree that the thing to do is to grab them by the balls and rip those balls off.
Hence Mencius description of those wars as civil wars, fought in a manner that shows that they were friends before, and hoped to be friends after, while the point of conflict with those dreadful fascists was to destroy them. Often, as in the Vietnam war, and arguably the Afghan war, the concern for not offending people paralyzed the war effort.
Wars with left enemies were like squabbles within a marriage. You would not want the squabble to escalate to divorce. If the US had really wanted to win in South Vietnam, would have had to win in North Vietnam, or credibly threaten to do so if the North Vietnamese did not back off. Hence, civil war, family squabble. The objective with fascist enemies was to destroy them. The objective with communist and Islamist enemies was to get them to converge. When communism fell, the CIA was not only shocked and incredulous, but also dismayed. Obama wants Islam to come resemble the WCC. That might arguably be a reasonable plan, but it is not the plan that was applied to Rhodesia or the Greek colonels—nor even the plan applied to our supposed allies, the Northern Alliance.