Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I think this USSR quote is a good answer:

    We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

    (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

    In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.







  • I think you need to be more specific with the query. If I’m the only passenger plus crew, yes. If the plane is full of people going to a place to help out, no. If this flight could be done by train without multiplying door-to-door travel time more than 2.5 times, yes. If my blood type or bone marrow was so rare I could save a life, I think I’d be okay again even if I was a lone passenger. There is plenty of gray here to consider.








  • I’m going to say yes and no to that one. At the time they establish forevermore what is left-wing and what is right-wing, we’re past the estates general being called and I think also past the tennis court oath. For me, that’s already revolutionary times, they just haven’t cut Louie’s head off yet.

    Before that, I don’t think there was much exchange between the second and the third estate. I am sure there were nobles who were willing to change things around. But it also wasn’t a case where the second and the third estate, and maybe even the king, could agree on something and that would’ve been the end of that. France was riddled by internal fiefdoms with their own dumb trumpian tariffs. Any relief for the third would have had to involve rationalizing the economy and there were powerful lobbies (like the farmer general) who wouldn’t like that. Plus, people were hungry and hungry people don’t think straight. And Louie would’ve preferred to stick his head in the sand anyway and other than maybe Necker none of his ministers satisfied the requirements of “forward looking.”


  • What you’re asking is a counter factual. There is no way to answer this question either way. The thing with revolutions is that people suspect it is coming at some point but are still surprised when it happens. The recent fall of Assad in Syria - we’d all forgotten about that mess. East Germany celebrated its 40th anniversary with socialist pomp and circumstance and crumbled a month or so later. The French Revolution was not just about abandoning feudalist structures. It ran in parallel with famine due to terrible weather, a looming bankruptcy of the crown, inefficient leadership from the king, a new way of leadership expected by his subjects, (invented) scandals that were spread by what would become mass media, and the changes in thinking in the age of enlightenment with people engaged in virtuous one-up-manship. That’s after France had lent a helping hand to the American Revolution, not so much out of commitment to the cause but to point the finger at the neighbors across the Channel. You needed all of this in the blender to get to a point where enough people were radicalized enough to start chopping heads off. So even if they had found a negotiated solution to address the class problem, the revolution might still have happened, maybe a bit different, maybe not at all. Nobody knows.