most democratic countries cosplay as democracies. just like most communist countries cosplayed as communist.

ideology in its purest form. After the death of God, you need something to fill that unapproachable void. So you inject ideals- civil service, egalitarianism, tolerance, justice, etc – values that are virtuous and aspirational, but ultimately are just shiny veneers over a darker truth. it functions as scaffolding for systems that serve the interests of raw power. it is theater. performance. spectacle. underneath, the mechanisms of control, inequality, and corruption remain unchanged.

don’t make the mistake of believing that India is somehow unique here

Can’t have commerce happening for prosocial reasons, only greed!

i mean, if Jones is in bankruptcy the whole point is to pay his debts to who he owes, some of which i believe are the parkland families. so you want to sell it for the largest total amount in order to pay off as much debt as possible.

if a company really did offer $3.5m and was rejected meanwhile The Onion is getting accepted for $1.75m, I’d like to know why. I don’t think a company should get free dibs just because they’re more or less “ethical” than another. at the end of the day, they’re a for-profit corporation that is going to use this as a way to make money.

i don’t believe for one second this has anything to do with “prosociality”

if we’re talking about consecutive time spent, ie one single uninterrupted block of time, then I’d say about 7~8 hours.

one time my ex-girlfriend’s cat managed to get way. we think it was one of the roommates opened the door to the back and wasn’t paying much attention. the cat was sneaky, he would try to dart out all the time

i spent the entire day, basically, walking around the fairly large apartment complex yelling out his name and shaking a bag of treats

a few hours in, my ex had a mental breakdown and gave up thinking any continued searching was hopeless. she really liked the cat and wasn’t taking it well

but i just kept at it. towards the end of the day, around dusk when it was starting to get dark, i heard an exasperated meow behind me and the cat came up running to me. it looked very scared and confused.

we had just moved from one place to another a few hours away. so it was used to be an outside cat but it didn’t know the area whatsoever.

anyhow it actually stopped trying to run out of the house after that, so that was nice

I’m split between this would lead to good things and this will usher in a new McCarthy red scare style period.

Ironically though I think we are inching closer to the Chinese system as the Chinese system inches closer to our own.

A- brutal capitalism with workers rights stripped down as much as possible

B- a system where a small group of elites get to make all of the political decisions

C- a state who cooperates with the largest corporations in order to stay in power and maintain high profits

The difference is China has been slowly liberalizing, giving their people slightly more political and economic freedoms. Meanwhile here in the US we are doing rhe opposite.

It’s almost as if we are both converging towards the same end goal. A sort of convergent evolution headed to the government with the highest fitness. Which unfortunately for us peons isn’t designed for us

Every step in the right direction is better than taking no steps at all (or worse, taking steps backwards).

voting DNC is taking no steps at all. it’s neoliberal status quo. brutal no-safety rails capitalism, genocide, and war.

. the only time in this country’s history where people managed to get meaningful concessions out of the ruling class was when the ruling class was afraid. moments like the New Deal where communists were getting serious consideration. moments like the civil rights era where blacks and anti-war advocates were protesting en mass. moments like like stonewall riots which led to rights for gays.

these are steps in the right direction. voting DNC is pissing against the wind deluding yourself that you can somehow outvote fascism in a democracy

yeah it’s just constantly testing boundaries. we do the same thing. for example officially we accept the “one china” policy. our government on paper does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country, but as a part of China

but then we will do stuff like send the Secretary of State over to Taiwan, which implies a de facto independence. it’s meant to provoke China and salami slice, in a similar way with the balloons. or our navy drills over in the South China Sea, etc. basically great power geopolitics is a lot of dick swinging

It’s two fold

1- intel and testing

they are first testing their spy balloons, seeing how it works in a real life operation. in addition, they are getting data about taiwan in addition to taiwan’s response. for example if you have networks listening to everything that’s happening on taiwanese defense networks, you can start seeing certain things light up when you approach from one side or the other.

this gives you clues on how it would play out in a real military scenario

2- diplomatic salami slicing

this technique basically tries to slowly over time trivialize certain actions. you make an action that seems aggressive but not aggressive enough to warrant a serious response. then you let it cool down and push the envelope a little further, cool down again, and so on. you start to shift the “overton window” of what is acceptable. you slowly shift red lines over bit by bit

for a film analogy like the type Zizek loves to make, I’d recommend the semi-recent Danish horror film: Speak No Evil. There’s an American remake, which in my opinion was OK but the message falls flat because of the ending.

tldr: i don’t think this is petty. i think they know exactly what they are doing and are making the strategically optimal move