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Feb 25, 2023Edited
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Lorenzo Warby's avatar

The Second Reich analogy is more about CCP China in international affairs. I would not push it beyond that. As you say, the civilisational, ideological and institutional context are all different, so internal dynamics will be different.

The use of foreign policy as a regime-legitimation authority-demonstration mechanism is similar, however. CCP foreign policies have a Weltpolitik feel to them. Including challenging an Anglosphere naval hegemon.

My favourite “what is this like?” analogy is provided by Niall Ferguson.

https://youtu.be/yLiPPtxKRAA

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Great insights. Thanks.

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Apple Pie's avatar

> I am also very wary of invoking any analogies with either Fascism or National Socialism with any part of Post-Enlightenment Progressivism (“wokery”)

Totally agree. Claims that the Woke are fascist or Nazi-like are ridiculous; the hard right always loved physical fitness, hierarchies, immutable categories, rigidity, and simple thinking. The Woke are deeply ambivalent about their bodies, egalitarian, engaged in a constant negotiation with reality, flitting from fad to fad, and ultimately obsessed with the left-wing equivalent of asking how many genders can dance on the head of a pin and how anyone can attain salvation from the sin of pale skin.

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Lorenzo Warby's avatar

Very nicely put.

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Rick Larson's avatar

Homo sapiens: the ape that murdered its way into niceness. The human condition in a nutshell.

Interesting.

Might be beyond your purview, still I will throw it up against your wall reading this snippet of hierarchy, I've been typing Jesus Christ was a rebel against hierarchy from time to time, but no one has commented on this idea.

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Lorenzo Warby's avatar

It is a rather Girardian thought I am offering. That human society is not based on a foundational murder, but thousands of them. And if your benchmark is eternity, human hierarchies are going to look inadequate.

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Mar 13, 2023
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Rick Larson's avatar

There is a translation of Sumerian that indicates this one true god is actually a Sumerian King that defeated all the neighboring kingdoms. Along with other similar old testament stories. So its older and its not jewish and its actually hierarchy. All organizations are involved which are all rotten money grubbing power seeking warmongers. This is competition hierarchy!

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Mar 13, 2023
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Rick Larson's avatar

Converts are accepted.

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Mar 13, 2023
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Rick Larson's avatar

I had to look this name up, interesting no doubt short description of him.

I'm not up to your level of discussion, but I have thoughts of how hierarchy beyond the Dunbar Number escalated into this morass.

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