A Theory of the World as run by large adult children
tomclancy.info182 points by tclancy 3 hours ago
182 points by tclancy 3 hours ago
The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2].
The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda, as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries.
If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been.
[1] https://www.ccac.gov/system/files/media/calendar/images/Semi...
[2] https://www.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/semiquincentennia...
> the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda
Many other countries similarly changed the name of their respective ministries, reflecting the ideal (if not the fact) that war should not be pursued for gain or used to resolve international controversies.
Actions trail behind ideals; ideals are set to remind us of how things should be even if we don't live up to them. Renaming the DoD to DoW reflects an aggressive, violent and ultimately predatory posturing that the West had chosen to abandon after WW2 and many millions of deaths.
The millions of deaths are still happening, they just aren't our boys so we were all cool with it.
> as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries.
…which is the bad thing being discussed, yes. I don’t really understand why “there used to be one” would be exonerative. Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use. Lines up with the “adult children” theory. Skip the actual work, (which would involve addressing the nation and justifying this change in posture), instead focus on the performative.
As we are seeing in real time with Iran, “we’ll just war!” was a juvenile idea, committed to with near-zero forethought or planning.
Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.
No it won't, that's merely fantasy projection (a personal desire for the US to suffer for what it's doing). US hegemony ended with the rise of China's economy into superpower status over the past 10-15 years. There was no scenario where the relatively brief US hegemony from the late 1980s to the late 2000s was going to continue no matter what the US did. China was always going to build a military to match its economic might. That military will gradually project globally.
US hegemony lasted for a mere ~20 years. Today it does not possess hegemony, China is able to stand-off fully with the US both economically and militarily (at least in Asia).
Iran is a regional conflict. It will matter less than the Iraq war and occupation did.
The current preferred name is Department of Defense. Ask anyone who isn’t incompetence aligned.
That's the official name. The preferred one by the government is Dept of War. [1]
As the original poster said:
> If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-pr...
Well, he picked bad examples but his main point is so fucking obvious doesn’t even need examples , which is ironically why I think he picked bad ones.
The situation is more like *just make a gesture to look around*
Famed spy fiction writer Tom Clancy surely knows the provenance of the name Department of War.
Totally different guy actually. The author died in 2013. I was briefly experiencing a bit of disgust at the idea that they were now ghostwriting blog posts as him, before clicking around the site.
Just to add, it was in the process of manufacture during Biden, signed into production during Trump. A unfortunately timed nothing burger.
Not to say that War is Peace folks won’t jump on it.
The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is the opposite, both get the worst education for both subjects.
I think we haven't felt yet the true consequences of this. Worldwide.
Education is a weird field with perhaps a few thousand years of very good unimplemented ideas.
Imagine training an llm by putting it in a room with other untrained LLMs? All that knowledge is sure to rubb of!
A big part of the problem education systems are solving is not "how do we get knowledge to children", but "how do we get masses of children to learn without coercion of the ugliest kind".
Some children are innately motivated to learn. Some are motivated so strongly you could give them a smartphone and watch them learn all they need to learn in life. But those children aren't the norm - they're the freaky 1 in 1000 outliers. And education has to work with everyone.
Thus, peer pressure. That's what putting a whole bunch of students in the same room accomplishes.
> Some children are innately motivated to learn
I don't think I've met a single child in my life that isn't excited about learning about new stuff, but it really depends on what it is, it differs a lot! And they're all different as well, someone who's really into math might hate history, or vice-versa. But they all want to learn something, in my experience.
The problem occurs when you place them all in one school, and force them to learn everything, even things they don't want to learn about, and that kind ruins the other parts they actually find fun and engaging.
> The problem occurs when you place them all in one school, and force them to learn everything, even things they don't want to learn about
A difficult part is that children aren't really in the position to know what they want to learn most of the time.
Sure, many prefer sports over math but covering a broad spectrum in pre-teen and teenager education is quite important to get them develop these preferences and themselves as a person. They are given more agency/choice (electives etc.) as they grow up.
There are also topics you need to learn that aren't fun/engaging (especially as fun/engaging is quite subjective and depends on the individual). Especially when those topics are prerequisites to other potentially fun topics (you will have to learn the fundamentals before engaging with advanced topics in most subjects)
Lest you think there’s one simple solution, my kid went to a school for one year that deliberately eliminated all that stuff - no set curriculum, no specific academic goals, and students get the majority of the vote on the rules and anything about the whole setup. They could learn about anything they want to, with no pressure.
Most of the kids spent their whole days playing Xbox, Switch, or brainrot games like Roblox on tablets. (No, they weren’t “creatively building new worlds” on Roblox, just screwing around consuming what others had made in order to manipulate them into spending Robux).
>Some children are innately motivated to learn. Some are motivated so strongly you could give them a smartphone and watch them learn all they need to learn in life. But those children aren't the norm - they're the freaky 1 in 1000 outliers. And education has to work with everyone.
I worked as a teacher for a year. Children are innately motivated and curious (this is not just a cliche). If there was any laziness it usually stemmed from fear of not being good enough but they definitely all tried, even students that didn't know their 5 times table by age 10. Some students have greater self-perseverance than others though, some can't handle being wrong and fear being seen as less-then their peers. Others like to challenge themselves without such fear.
LLMs have only a very small working memory and they don't have a memory beyond the current session.
I mean, that LLM idea _sounds_ ridiculous, but similar ideas have worked really well in machine learning for games like Chess and AI.
This is assuming that the knowledge space being aimed at is discoverable solely by exploration of 1v1 games. Maths and maybe some of the sciences could be set up like this if you were very clever about it, but not much else.
> by top skilled immigration
who are mostly from countries where education is
> leaning more to memorization
There’s a potential irony here that a commenter lamenting the decline of education in the West is leaning on the “critical thinking over memorization” trope in contemporary Western education, when that trope has contributed to a decline in educational effectiveness.
The massive success of information retrieval allowed people to trick themselves that they no longer needed to remember things, and remember them easily. They should instead turn focus on critical thinking.
But critical thinking is knowledge based. At least, I buy E. D Hirch’s argument that it is.
This argument is also explored by the “Quantum Computing for the Very Curious” series that uses spaced repetition to teach an advanced topic. The series has been posted to HN more than once.
I also find it convincing.
Memorizing is not understanding. You can see this clearly with LLMs trying to predict outside their training data.
Yes, memorization is important. What I argue it's pushing out truly understanding and critical thinking. Kids need trial and error from experimentation (play).
Believe or not, if you look at Zhihu[0] you'll see a lot of people glazing Western education system. Grass is always greener on the other side of Pacific.
[0]: China's Quora equivalent, but much better than Quora
The trend of discounting memorization is damaging. Memorization is an incredible tool for learning.
Possibly things are worse, but here’s an argument that we’ve gotten unrealistically ambitious about universal education through college:
What People Want From Our Schools Has Never Been Accomplished, Anywhere, Ever https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-people-want-from-o...
College and school are super suboptimal at dispensing education.
We keep smart kids co-mingled with disruptive kids and bullies. We need to do what Asian countries do - entrance exams at every level.
We don't let kids excel at their interest area. Math and science, obviously, but we lack programs for entrepreneurship and leadership that might be better for kids that aren't STEM-focused. Something like a scouts-type program that teaches them business, accounting, management, leadership. Sports and the arts are pretty well covered, though.
If you're born poor and/or without interested parents, the system doesn't help mobility much. Kids gravitate to the environments they live in, and school doesn't shelter them from this.
College itself is a bubble for many degree programs. It's fantastic for hands-on sciences, but useless for career development in liberal arts. It will put you into debt if you're not already wealthy. We need to subsidize STEM and reintroduce college loan dischargeability so risk to lenders is back in the equation.
Programs are too expensive. Universities sell themselves as "experiences". Amenities, facilities, day spas. Admins are too big. Kids are taking degrees they shouldn't.
Grad programs are also inefficient. Academic publishing, the research and grant treadmill, not letting smart students immigrate, ...
The whole thing needs to be gutted and rewritten. From early childhood to post-grad.
You get a free education in entrepreneurship and leadership when you're born into the upper socioeconomic groups.
I think you are reflecting on survivor bias for successful people.
Almost all rich families I met saw entrepreneurship as lower-status. They chase arts and such. They are posturing they don't need to care about money. [of course it's a lie, but they do it anyway]
Only a fraction of the new rich get their kids into entrepreneurship while the rest are just spoiled. I heard many times "I want my kids to have all the things I din't have growing up" and then the kids turn into horrible entitled brats who hate their parents. Then the inevitable "How could they do this to me! I gave them everything!". It's not easy raising kids, even with enough money.
Nothing can be done about that.
We need to focus on ways to boost class mobility at a young age.
> And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization
The idea that (correct) answers are something that can and may be known is all over the place, lately also in technology (LLMs, curve fitting, etc). Notably, answers must be able to validate themselves, every time. (Western) education used to be about this, before it reoriented towards instruction.
Memorization is pretty much the single largest undervalued thing in the west which has a gigantic impact on the mental capabilities of people.
I mean I get that rote memorization of eg. The multiplication table (7x7=49 etc pp) feels pointless, but it is training your brain. And a growing person whose brain is still developing who continuously memorizes new things will be smarter by the time they're 20 then the same person that didn't, only put in minimal effort because everyone around them talks like intelligence is mostly genetics.
I mean genetics definitely plays a role given the same circumstances - but your effort - including memorization - is massively more impactful.
> And a growing person whose brain is still developing who continuously memorizes new things will be smarter by the time they're 20 then the same person that didn't,
I dunno, I guess it depends on what we mean by "smart" but I've definitively met (and been friends) with people who weren't able to live on their own by their 20s, although they were very "smart" in school and highly intelligent in general. I've also seen the reverse, dumb people being "better at life in general". I don't think it's as black and white as you're trying to make it out to be.
Idiocracy really seems to appeal to eugenicists. Is “stupid people breed too much” really an issue we think is worth propagating?
Society absolutely needs to more correctly incentivize smart people to 'get together' to form child creating and raising units (families).
Maybe society should focus on supporting high quality environments for raising children well.
This probably includes a bunch of budget expensive things like...
* Rich interaction between smart adults and children, at low density
* Ensure good breakfast and lunch at minimum
* year round childcare
* Every child great medical care
There can be also a softer version of it, which is that cultural richness and focus on education are easily transmitted within families. A society that doesn't value culture and education is going to produce less educated families with even less educated children.
It’s also true that IQ is both real and highly heritable. The military uses what’s essentially an IQ test to screen out the bottom 15% or so of the population: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201801.... The military has found that people with aptitude test scores below the cutoff can’t be trained to competently perform any job in the military.
IQ is also highly heritable: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5985927.
IQ correlates most strongly with socioeconomic class, with members of the same ethnic group scoring higher over the decades as that ethnic group as a whole becomes wealthier.
Ah, yes, the IQ test; the universal, unbiased gauge of intellect across all cultures.
It isn't that, but it is one of the strongest predictors of success in the US military.
Sure, but what has that got to do with “IQ is also highly heritable?” which, in this context, suggests intelligence is something innate and biological, rather than recognizing an IQ test as a gauge skewed by culture and socioeconomic status.
Compared to what though? Also, how is success in the military even defined? Highest rank? Most years served? Least injuries? The highest body count? Lowest double-digit APR% on 2018 Mustang with a rebuilt title?
It loses its signal once you reach triple digits. You don't want someone with <80 but it tells you nothing about someone with 120 or 160.
The movie did have an unfortunate eugenic implication, which is doubly unfortunate because it wasn’t even necessary for the plot. Society can just get dumb due to people not valuing education.
Genetically we’re not that different from cavemen, so the floor (without any weird eugenic theories about dumb people breeding too much) is “tamed caveman.”
>The movie did have an unfortunate eugenic implication
You’re thinking of dysgenic, not eugenic.
Gattaca is a movie about eugenics.
Education is still very much present in Idiocracy (Brawndo blah blah). It's the lack of value in logic and thought process that causes the problem. When people value winning an argument on a logical fallacy, there's a severe issue. Education is oft used as the fallacy itself.
Much like today on all sides of every significant debate. Where the loudest most emotional rise on feelings over logic.
If a person doesn't immensely value learning they're wrong, they exist as part of the problem.
A room full of people in charge of the most power nation wouldn't fall prey to something like false dichotomy, during an important address to said nation? Would they...?
"Stupid people breed too much" is a proposition that is either true or false, within some worldview.
(For example, how stupid is stupid? How much breeding is to much? Is there even such a thing as too much breeding? All these are variables up for debate.)
But preventing the spread of an idea that you fear may be true, simply because you don't like the consequences, is intellectually dishonest.
Would you endorse suppressing the idea that the earth orbits the sun just because you lived in a milieu where the primacy of the church was more important than truth?
Argue against eugenics because it's unethical to prevent people from reproducing (and therefore no amount of "stupid people" reproducing is "too much"). Don't cloud your judgment by denying propositions that you fear may be true.
Depends on the timescale you care about. It is, objectively, a very big problem over larger timescales (assuming we aren't killed off and don't engineer our children's genes).
Casually tossing about an accusation like that is not at all in keeping with the guidelines for this website.
That movie can be understood in several different ways.
Also, I'd like to point out that the core problems with eugenics isn't an assertion that intelligence is hereditary, but that:
- Race is not a scientifically grounded concept
- Complex traits do not have Mendelian inheritance
- Measurement of intelligence is problematic
- Even measures that strongly correlate with success are confounded by environmental, cultural and economic factors
Thus, the conclusions drawn by eugenicists are based on their racism and prejudice, not by any scientific conclusions. It is a pseudo-scientific framework to justify (at the limit) ethnic cleansing.
The opening of the movie could also be read as a commentary or satire about a certain type of reality TV show or talk show that was popular at that time, but it was also a really cheap shot at a specific class of people and demonstrated a level of contempt that cannot really be defended.
But the rest of the movie was focused more on anti-intellectual and shallow culture and corporate greed - the heritability of intelligence never got another mention.
Really the issue is about cultivating a culture of caring and willingness to learn. That generally threatens the powerful so it is always an uphill battle to protect said values.
> (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries)
Ah yes, the undevelopped and oppressive countries able to provide them good enough education and not make them debt-ridden for it.
I don’t blame people for moving for better wages, but the level of rationalization used here to make brain drain feel virtuous is off the charts.
[flagged]
Something being old doesn't meant it's false. It even has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty
People have predicted the end of the world for literally thousands of years. Should’ve happened by now, right?
This has names too btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
And what do you call it when someone flings the names of fallacies at their opponent without argumentation?
(I agree with you, though)
There's a first time for everything, and an end to most things. The roman empire lasted hundreds of years, and then it ended. Many empires did. The sun will end too, at some point. Ice ages last for thousands of years, then they end. And there are countless other examples.
"X has lasted a long time so it will last more" is so obviously wrong. Think about it for more than 3 seconds.
Or was it sarcasm? I can't tell anymore.
> “X has lasted a long time so it will last more” is so obviously wrong.
Smarter people than you and I have thought about this problem and come to the opposite conclusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
Perhaps some folks don't get the reference.
They capitalized “Idiocracy” so it seems pretty likely they’re unfortunately, whether they know it or not, endorsing the eugenics-based thesis of the movie.
We don't have to support Eugenics to understand there's probably a real effect.
You can’t disentangle “smart people have few kids, dumb people have lots of kids, ergo we are gradually getting dumber” from eugenics (or class for that matter). It’s inherent in the argument. It’s also not how genes work.
It’s a very classist, flawed argument. In some way it’s emblematic of what the right calls “East Coast elitism” yet I find people from across the political spectrum have no issue embracing the argument (because they all assume they’re part of the “smart” group). “Wow look at all these dumb hicks having kids while the smart, responsible, educated people aren’t.“ You really don’t see the issue with that?
There’s even an XKCD for it: https://xkcd.com/603/
You can call it a flawed argument, but then you need to point out the flaw. Intelligence is heritable. Flynn effect has reversed. High IQ people have less kids. What's the flaw?
You can find a lot of ancient people saying it was happening. They were obviously wrong, right? Things are better now than then, so they were wrong. Nevermind that many of them were speaking of real social decline, not of humanity altogether in the long run but of their own society in a less global sense. When Socrates was bitching about "kids these days", Athens was peaking and a long period of uneven decline was starting. So really, he probably wasn't wrong.
Plato, and Heraclitus before him, both thought that society would eventually collapse. They sounded smart but would’ve been quite surprised to see what we’ve done with the world.
Their societies arguably were doomed. I'm sure they'd be impressed by much we have today, but after the shock wore off are you sure they would change their minds concerning humanity's long term fate? Between climate change, the nukes and dark forest aliens, a lot of people today think we're doomed in the long run. (For what its worth, I don't.)
I have genuinely put a lot of thought into this lately. I have the sensation like older media was more expressive and thoughtful, there's at least more... interesting flavors there generally...
I am happy to ponder and willingly accept this is probably just my perception.
I have a couple of theories. The creators of the media are becoming more and more my age. Do they have nothing interesting to say to me as our experience is shared? Is this something experienced by previous generations as their generation took over media, or is our zeitgeist as "digital natives" so newly shared that this is a new experience?
I know people who would blame "ensh*tification" and move on, but I really think that there is more to what is happening.
What I do know is it's exceedingly rare for me to watch a movie or show made after about 2015 and to find myself thinking about it days later. There are of course exceptions.
Its care. Us humans can feel when something was made with care vs when it’s made to check some lists people with ties made. Same with music, food, books, art, software, hardware, design, houses. Most stuff today is made to avoid some risks instead of being what it ought to be. Not trying to please anyone is the best way to make great things. Or maybe it is my hate of focus groups who spoiled it all (and I used to be a game user researcher…)
Weird analogy, but it feels similar to the way old music differed to new music.
Old music had more variation in volume - volume rises and falls to add nuance to the piece. New music is produced differently and has a more “flat” sound due to everything being louder and variation being reduced by compression.
Seems like some parallels to other forms of media.
Music is interesting to me, because I've experienced the opposite.
What I've encountered is if you get outside the top 100, a lot of like TikTok and SoundCloud famous people are actually doing some really interesting music. Things that play with the sound in ways you would never hear on the radio.
I feel like music is the one area where I still genuinely find interesting modern stuff regularly.
I agree. I feel there is not a time in history where such a huge diversity of music was produced.
I strongly disagree. Just because compression is common in pop music (and perhaps overused in some genres) doesn't mean new music isn't innovative and dynamic. When I listen to music say from 1920 to 1950, it is so often so incredibly lame (not always). It's basic ideas and chord progressions and simple melodies with lyrics that don't say much.
Music is a way for people to express themselves and relate about how they see the world. People didn't stop doing that recently. In fact, I'd say people have been emboldened to say even more and push what music really means.
It's not just compression. Rick Beato has talked about this a lot.
Popular music no longer has any key changes:
From 1960 to 1995, between 20% and 35% of Billboard Hot 100 number one hits in any given year contained a key change. Around the turn of the millennium that rate started to dip until it hit 0% by the end of the 2000s. [1]
I believe that simple 4/4 time has also become more prevalent as compared to more complex time signatures. I don't have as good support for this claim, but the AI tells me "4/4 (simple quadruple) has dominated Western popular music since at least the 1960s, and corpus work suggests that compound and non‑4/4 meters have become less common over time in mainstream styles, implying an even higher proportion of songs in simple 4/4 today.".
Beato is also fond of pointing out how modern music is written by committee, and that modern artists are more a "product" than ever before. From memory, he's pointing out that in the past, the credited writer of popular songs was usually a band, or perhaps a single person. But more recently, the credited writer is a list of multiple people not the band (and in fact, top songs across recent years have been notable not under the name of a band, but of an individual performer).
[1] https://www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/p/revisiting-the-death-of-...
That could be true - but this was specifically referring to the volume levels in recorded music, rather than variability in melody or composition.
Is the loudness war still going on? I kind of assumed it died out with streaming. Music apps are smart enough nowadays to normalize loudness anyway, and there are better ways of getting attention, right?
Crowd-sourced metrics at:
2026 releases have varied dynamic range but the majority is still low. Loudness war mastering sounds better on phone speakers and in cars. Even though streaming services normalize loudness, you need quiet listening environments and good headphones/speakers to properly appreciate a high dynamic range recording.
Indeed streaming killed the loudness war - all major streaming apps either require masters to meet a specific loudness target or perform normalization on their end to move their encodes to their loudness target.
I’m not quite sure, tbh.
I mostly listen to pop music or pop-adjacent, which is like the ultra-processed food of music. Highly compressed and generally lacking much dynamism.
I assume there is plenty of interesting dynamism outside of the pop charts and Spotify mixes, but unless I’m listening to live versions or really raw artists, I generally don’t experience them.
Similar to how music changes perceptions of movie scenes (it's usually silly but the effect is there), newsrooms have been decorated to look like a crisis center with the choice of colors and words.
People are naturally prone to pointing their attention at sources of alarm. And attention is important for advertisements which pay the bills.
News was not produced or directed back then like it is today.
Interesting thought-provoking movies still exist. They're just far away from regular people's comfort zone. I'll recommend you three post 2015 movies that will get you thinking:
Wandering (2022)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Monster (2023)
But I'd concede that maybe making movies nowadays is harder because things are turning more and more expensive and there's too much pressure for producing profitable movies. So Art takes a back sit in movies that look for profit.
EEAaO is a fun slop movie, but a thinker it is not.
It's more of a thinker if you get past the very well done and entertaining first layer of 'slop'. (Content warning: there's some offensive potty humor and LOTS of violence in that first layer!)
The movie considers potential. A literal multiverse of potential. It also explores how society treats people using their potential and time in different ways. As fellow readers gray and their family relations start to get older they too will likely have the misfortune of knowing people entering dementia. How people are treated as they slide away from this reality is represented rather well by the film.
I think that if you're going through a a hard moment it'll make an impact. But it's true that the themes are not "deep" nor complex.
I remember reading the letters of Cicero about Gaias Julius (Later known as Cesar) how he complains how the he and his gang is acting all amoral and wearing ridiculous scandalous clothes, waring the togas in provocative feminine fashion.
There are accounts from all over history of how "the times were more thoughtful and moral in the good old days" But here we are, thousands of years later, still complaining about the younger members of our species and how they will bring ruin to us all. Perhaps they will, but it all seems so human to complain about that.
I remember the art of the 90s - when my part of the world got access to marvelous pieces like Thunder in Paradise, Barbed Wire, American Ninja, Bay Watch ... at the time it was considered the pinnacle of art by teenagers like me, and despised by my parents. But at the same time we had things like The Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon ... We remember the good stuff and the forget the fluff.
There are some real gems being created all the time, maybe not always from Hollywood but human creativity soldiers on.
The Good Place, The Expanse, 3 Body Problem, Horizon Zero Dawn, Expedition 33, Project Hail Marry. There is a constant stream of incredible thoughtful stuff being produced - books, games, movies, essays, videos, podcasts - the medium might change but humans always try to find ways to discover, understand and express the world around us in novel ways, one just needs to listen/watch.
> But here we are, thousands of years later,
Not like there was a general lack of tragedy, pain, suffering, war, chaos in the intervening thousands of years.
Seems so superficial to ignore everything and just say if we're here, we exist, then the claim that things will go bad is proven false. The only thing proven false is if anyone ever claimed humanity will be extinct. But think of all the suffering in all the wars between the roman empire and now. Is that nothing? Does that not qualify as very bad stuff? Did humanity advance continuosly, or was it a chaotic path, with ups and downs? Don't the downs qualify as what the complainers predicted?
To me it seems history teaches us we will survive as a species. But there is definitely a lot of room for very bad stuff to happen. It has happened before.
Risk management kills any attempt at bold choices, decisions are steered at the modelable and the low risk. There space is thus shrunk. When there were fewer media behemoths there were more variations on the risk models and the pattern was less descernable.
> The creators of the media are becoming more and more my age.
I'm a boomer so the opposite is happening to me. The people in media look more and more like children to me. So I can't tell if the fact that they seem to be speaking more childishly is real or just the expected bias from an old fart. I should experiment with getting AI to put the same words in Walter Cronkite's mouth to see if it changes them.
Betting on "it's me that has changed" has rarely been false throughout history. Humans have mostly been the same throughout the ages.
It’s definitely not the only reason but it is a big reason in my opinion. All new movies are stripped of grit and edge. They have no gravitas. There are no rapes, purely objectified women, any sort of implied CSA, truly hero tier “alpha” men etc. Everyone in movies these days seem like mild mannered office workers. I feel like filmmakers are bound by many rules that turn everything into mass accessible milquetoast.
No need to do a drive by on Predator Badlands like that, it's a perfectly enjoyable film in its own right. I agree with the author though, there's nothing nearly as emotionally deep or socio-politically engaging as One Battle After Another, and so it would make for poor choice as a double feature to run second in the pairing.
The movie was excellent. Killer of the killers is excellent as well. I was entertained.
Coincidentally I just watched OBAA yesterday and found it very lacking. I’m so surprised by the positive reception. Great visual, acting and music, but I found almost no emotion in it because none of the conflicts it sets up actually resolve on screen. Characters don’t confront consequences of their choices and don’t grow.
thank you! spoiler alert if anyone hasnt seen Predator Badlands
Tom self owns himself quite a bit by dismissing a movie as drivel and then comparing it to dumb plots made by adult children. the entire point of the movie is to demonstrate how dumb and bad overt masculinity is. yes its oversimplified but its Predator. the audience is hormonal teenage boys who might think toxic masculinity is cool. the entire setup Tom thought was dumb is more or less called out as dumb later in the movie
I see your take but I took it as "don't limit yourself to the confines of tradition and culture, open yourself up to others, go your own path, do the right thing, and make friends along the way to enrichen your life and meaning".
If you read a bit further he does say that the reviews are good and he should give it a proper go
In my experience, everyone turns twelve when they disagree or are shown to be wrong. Very few have the temerity to accept their faults. Let's not throw stones lest they hit our own glass houses.
I’ll admit to having done that before. Sure.
When people say you’re wrong it triggers cognitive dissonance and social threat brain stem stuff that had to be consciously mediated. Even if you’re someone who makes an effort to do this it can catch you off guard.
it's instinctive, people will readily be accept to be told they're wrong by an authority rather than a peer. people cant cast judgement without having earned to position to do so. similarly, people will not receive judgement when it doesnt come from a valid position of authority.
the answer is not to try and change human psychology, it's to reintroduce the hierarchies and structures where correction and judgement flows through the correct channels.
I sit on the tip of my chair when told i'm wrong. I have either a moment of woah! realizing they are right or their argument becomes increasingly silly under scrutiny. I also know how to spot seeking new arguments for opinions without.
The most enlightening is to be repeatedly wrong about a subject. Most of those end realizing there is no actual data worthy of a conclusion. It suddenly becomes obvious that should have been the answer from the beginning.
Nothing changes in my life if the earth is flat or not. I'm so much not in a hurry finding the answer that I will probably never need to.
Is this an attack on Captain Underpants of the silly novels? Or are we arguing that the global leaders are immature and don't think through their decisions? I admit I've only just started reading Captain Underpants but it doesn't seem like George and Harold are willing to do pranks to the extent of harming anyone. I do recognize childness in leadership occasionally. When I directly have to interface with it I adapt my response as though it actually is a child. That tends to help moderate the results somewhat. Children for the most part have good intentions and pure hearts, when things go wrong it's through inexperience not malice.
Does Tom Clancy think the novels are literary trash? The books are made for children, it's about following your dreams and using your imagination in the face of grown up resistance.
The author seems to like the books, but somewhat downplays the children's world and nature. From my understanding of the author's article, It's a nature he believes adults shouldn't have and yet powerful people do. So he's bringing this up, comparing the children in Captain Underpants with these powerful people. And also he's reflecting on how media is created with a "childish mind".
Personally, I don't think there's anything to downplay or wrong about children or being childish as adults. That's not the problem. The problem's the insensitivity and shamelessness of powerful people.
I didn’t read it as an attack on the novels. I think it’s meant to be about Trump. Or football. Or something. I couldn’t really tell.
The US Department of War does not take full advantage of its name. Declaring a war has real legal and political consequences which presumably are not appealing to the current US administration.
It’s an evolved skin for blending with the other humans. Look at what they always actually do.
If you're saying they are only pretending to be stupid, then they're doing a really good job.
The author framed this as if "One Battle After Another" was some adult work and they couldn't watch "Predator" afterwards because it was so childish.
I had the opposite reaction and could barely make it through 15m of One Battle. The movie opens with women in skin tight dresses and mini skirts with automatic weapons robbing banks and breaking into migrant detention centers while yelling "this is what real power looks like". That feels like childish nonsense to me but then it is wrapped in this "radical chic" that is supposed to force me to take it seriously. Rather than movies like Predator which are intentionally dumb and fun the author should look at how vague political messages and sex are used to take extremely shallow work and make it "adult".
> That feels like childish nonsense to me but then it is wrapped in this "radical chic" that is supposed to force me to take it seriously.
We aren't supposed to take it seriously; it's meant to be "childish nonsense". We can easily see that these women are getting off, sexually and by exercising power over others. A woman in a short dress struts around on a counter and introduces herself as "jungle pussy" to captives in a bank robbery, all while ranting about "black power". What happens next? A (black) security guard dies in agony and we get a close-up on that. We see "radical chic posturing" and then its consequences.
Meanwhile Predator: Badlands truly is a movie for children. I sat through the whole thing with friends (who loved it by the way). Lots of adults love children's movies and books. I'm unbothered by this, because these people's tastes don't seem to the affect the production of books/movies that are actually good. But I do feel that people who eat this stuff up have failed to grow up in some fundamental way.
>But I do feel that people who eat this stuff up have failed to grow up in some fundamental way.
For many people this is just a way to turn their brain off. My wife (backend engineer too) describes it as something similar to cannabis intake as described by other people. Or alchohol.
I bounced off it in about the same amount of time, just the other day. I’ll probably return to it at some point given how talked-about it is, but as soon as the woman was revealed to be pregnant the implicit “ho ho! Who’s the father?!” made my eyes roll so hard it knocked me right out of the movie.
I was totally with it until they started talking about the real world again. The Department of War was called that up until 1947 when it was renamed to the euphemistic Department of Defense (or more specifically merged with the Department of the Navy which was previously separate). It has nothing to do with the right to self defense, the undermining of which would make a great paragraph here comparing modern self defense law the world over with schoolhouse rules.
Just because something was done before doesn’t mean it’s good (obviously?)
The purpose of the Department of Defense should be to defend America and Americans. Waging war is an unfortunate necessity that stems from this sometimes. War is not the only threat that can require a military response, and should never be a goal. No matter how you swing it, having a ‘Department of X’ definitely gives the impression - to people within and without it - that ‘X’ is a goal.
Even if you think about it amorrally, calling it the ‘Department of War’ is myopic.
Since 1947 US has been involved in 5 major wars (Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afganistan, Iraq).
Which begs the question: do you think it's more "moral" to wage wars and lie to public that you're in the business of defense OR say things that are truthful?
Spending trillion+ dollars on military is about the only thing that both political party agree on. Obama bombed more countries that most presidents.
Since we're talking about adults thinking like children: your simplistic ideas about what military should be have no effect on what it is.
If Iran had the firepower superiority over Israel and U.S. they would level both countries. This is no me saying. "Death to America" is a literal quote from now-dead ayatollah.
When you actually listen why they renamed DoD to DoW it's way more nuanced that you apparently believe.
One of the reasons is that political correctness is destructive in military. If you're actually at war, winning should be objective not PR optics.
And it seems to be working. See disaster of Afghanistan withdrawal compared to astonishing success of snatching Maduro and destroying Iran's capability to wage future wars.
Sure it may have been a euphemism, but the reasoning of this administration for trying to change it back is just childish and stupid: “We won the first world war, we won the second world war, we won everything before that and in between,” Trump said at the signing. “And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense.”
So they did the right thing but you don't like justification.
And the thing you object to is the totality of what every US official ever said on this topic?
Or maybe you're lying by omission?
Because a quick search told me this:
The stated rationale, per the executive order and public statements, was to:
- Project greater strength, resolve, and readiness to adversaries
- Emphasize offensive capability and "winning wars" rather than just defensive posture (Trump argued the "Defense" name sounded too passive or "woke," and linked it to perceived recent military struggles).
- Restore a historic name associated with periods of major U.S. victories (e.g., War of 1812, World War I, World War II), under the idea that it better signals "peace through strength" and focuses the department on warfighting and a "warrior ethos."
Somehow, it doesn't sound like the strawman, childish caricature you want us believe.
Do you disagree that putting DEI ideologies before the ideology of winning wars will result in degrading your capability to win wars?
No, it's not the right thing and it's done for stupid childish reasons.
I object to the person who was turned off by that sentence in the blog post, because it fits completely in an article claiming that the US government is being run by man babies.
That "rationale" is childish and dumb:
> Project greater strength, resolve, and readiness to adversaries
Why does the mightiest most powerful military in history need to project greater strength? Insecurity?
> Emphasize offensive capability and "winning wars" rather than just defensive posture (Trump argued the "Defense" name sounded too passive or "woke,"
Calling Truman woke is childish and stupid. And why does the US need to emphasize offensive capabilities and winning wars, when the Trump ran on a promise of no new wars?
> better signals "peace through strength"
So you get mad about a euphemistic Department of Defense but eat up some weird narrative about peace through strength? Interesting.
Observing toddlers fight over toys has yielded some of my most valuable insights into the nature of statecraft.
The narratives and what can be identity evolve. The brain’s core function to defend identity never does.
All fights between my children stem from resource contention.
Some kids will hoard, steal, and spit mouthfuls of milk on the other kids toys even when resources are plentiful. They can go far in this world.
That was my oil pipeline and he broke it!
Did not!
Did too!
But he drove his tank on my side!
That’s not your side! That’s my side!
Is not!
One thing you learn growing up is that there, in a sense, are no such thing as grownups.
Nobody knows what they are doing in the sense we think they do when we are kids.
Some adults try a bit harder to live up to the ideals of being an adult than others. They are toddlers inside like anyone else, but there's a layer of restraint on top that evidently not everyone has.
I agree to a large extent. Yet, what we see going on in US political leadership truly is beyond my belief of what reasonable adults should do and act like, even as an (precocious, sharp) ex-child.
When I think about it I start to ask question what sort of reasonable person would even get involved in the top political leadership? Especially in USA on both sides. It feels entirely select to those who can manage the absurdly hostile environment both from inside and outside... Which to me doesn't look like exactly healthy population.
If I remove my own political leanings, this group just completely dropped the mask.
Yes, it’s next level and clearly a period of decline. This is Nero and Caligula stuff. We’ve been sliding this way for a while.
It doesn’t mean this is the end of the USA. All civilizations go through ups and downs. This is, at least culturally and politically, a down.
I also think it’s global though. The US is manifesting it clearly and starkly, but that’s kind of US style. Authoritarianism backed by populist grievance politics and venal corruption are on the rise around the world.
idk if this was the exact quote but:
H.R. McMaster: Trump’s knowledge was like a series of islands. He might know a lot about one specific thing, but there were no bridges between the islands, no way to connect one thought to another
See also: the "Everyone is Twelve now" theory of politics.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91429448/everyone-is-12-twitter-...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/everyone-is-12-now-theory-of-...
Those who can do.
Those that can't become politicians.
At the risk of sounding very old:in partial response to the nonsense starting around the 2015/2016 era I decided it was a good time to start mining the cultural vault and catch up on classic movies and books (especially) that I’d always been meaning to get around to, and kind of immersed myself in it more and more over time. Lots of older science fiction, fantasy, and just random movies I’d heard of but never got around to experiencing.
Subsequently, trying to return to consuming modern media has been quite the shock to the system. In many ways, but maybe the most startling is the storytelling. Books and movies lauded for being modern classics are so brain-numbing stupid (sorry but there’s no other accurate way to describe them) abound. Just absolute paint by numbers stories, messaging so on the nose you almost need a new phrase to describe it because the standard one didn’t do it justice, small-minded and petty characters being portrayed as heroic or brilliant - it’s incredible. I know there’s already comparisons to Idiocracy in this thread, and yes I’m well aware of the term selection bias so there’s no need to point it out - of course classics are classic for a reason. But I’m talking the most celebrated stories of our modern age here, the supposed next generation of classics, and all I can think is… really? Really? Have you all gone insane?
Reminds me of this classic:
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working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now"
“I’m strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm” of course you do. You’re twelve. “I don’t want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal” hell yeah homie you’re twelve. “Maybe if there’s crime we should just send the army” bless your heart my twelve year old buddy
https://bsky.app/profile/veryimportant.lawyer/post/3lybxlwzj...
I think a lot of us have worked with That Guy at one point or another. The person that never internalized what being 'wrong' means. I don't mean the curmudgeons that might be really prickly about certain things, but the kind of person that is not only habitually wrong but incapable of recognizing it.
In a sense I think this is a different thing from someone that is antisocial or manipulative, because even they can admit being wrong or incorrect in certain circumstances. It's closest to narcissist behavior but it exhibits in such a specific way that makes me think it's a different type.
You could probably link it to a lot of different things. Extreme machismo social media brainrot, a society that rewards never admitting you're wrong, extreme wealth.
Garden variety malignant narcissism (my armchair psych opinion but grew up in this dynamic). It's acting out in response to their deep shame (the root thing that all of the narcissistic behavior is desperate to hide). They can't admit they're wrong, otherwise their entire psychological world collapses.
Coincidentally, that's also why it's so terrifying to see so many of these types in power. While most narcissists are mostly hot air and talk, occasionally, you get a legitimate wildcard that's destructive in difficult to repair ways (sometimes leaving nothing but smoldering rubble).
Yes, and here's an interesting (and clear) example that shows that narcissism is a complex delusion that puts one's own fault squarely into a blind spot that cannot be perceived. I watched this and, for the first time in my life, felt a huge pang of compassion and sadness for those that suffer from it, even though they make life more difficult for everyone else. They are broken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqRIw5FICAs
A Kent State professor calls 911 because she can't get into her building to pee; she is clearly drunk; they give her every opportunity to get a ride home; she refuses and is eventually detained. Later she goes to the police department to get an apology from the officers involved. It was, to me, a shocking example of the narcissistic delusion, with stakes low-enough that one could focus on that and not the side-effects.
It is very interesting when you explore the neurological mechanics of this. A narcissist is rigid thinking dialed up to 11. It is essential a special and pathological “skill” their brains have learned. They do not have to update their priors or spend metabolic energy on almost anything their life. Their brain figured out the best way to survive and conserve energy was to avoid costly updates to their beliefs. Repeated over years and that system becomes deeply myelinated, a core identity. Unwinding that is a feat. Some people just have a more narrow set of rigid beliefs (e.g. religion, work skills, etc).
Agreed on your neuro take. It would seem that the rigidness is somewhat reinforced by the pervasive mechanism of digital feedback. As we now can see clips of stupid behavior being propagated online as easily as opening our eyes and tap a screen, the rigid behavior of an overt narcissist is now on display as a model for lesser equipped minds to absorb. The narcissist acquires a visually recognizable position of power through their actions, and this makes them highly desirable by those lacking control in their own life. The audience is global... And where the terrain is fertile.. the said audience also votes for their model.
There are several subtypes of narcissism - overt (=grandiose), covert (=vulnerable), malignant, communal. (Some also use antagonistic as a further subtype of malignant.)
Normally, they are considered separate categories. However, how I like to think about them is a 2D spectrum.
Overt X covert is one axis, malignant X communal is another.
Overt X covert is defined by how the narcissist sees himself/herself:
- Overt thinks they are better than others and feel wronged when they are not treated the way they think they deserve - always respected even if they are wrong, or even admired, worshiped, celebrated. There's this implicit "I am the center of everything / I am the main character" about them. Many people accept this dynamic in order to avoid conflict or simply because they are natural pleasers and end up reinforcing it.
- Covert thinks they are worse than others and feel attacked by the smallest innocent things which threaten to expose some real or perceived weakness of theirs. You either end of walking on eggshells around them or end up triggering them in some ways you don't even recognize until you are their designated enemy.
Malignant X communal is defined by where they get their self-worth from:
- Malignant simply enjoys hurting others - they feed on other people's suffering and feel energized and empowered by getting away with it.
- Communal is driven by being seen as helping. This is not altruism but might look similar at first glance. However, altruism is about actually helping others, communal narcissism is about being perceived that way, that's their end goal. Actually helping is just a method to achieve that and becomes secondary when disagreement/conflict arises. This often happens when you don't show the appreciation they think they deserve.
Every narcissist is somewhere on this 2D spectrum (they are purely one subtype if they are at 0 on the other axis). But very commonly you see combinations like covert+communal and overt+malignant.
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A common misconception is that narcissists think they're better than others. They don't (only overt subtype does). But all narcissists think they are more important than others. They are the center of the world in their mind. This is implicit, they'd never describe it that way because that's what they consider normal. It would be like saying the air around us has transparent color - we don't say that because we consider it so normal to essentially ignore it.
What they do is they implicitly expect to be treated that way. Sometimes they manage to behave in ways which elicit this in others subconsciously. But if you don't, you get various antagonistic reactions depending on the combination of subtypes.
Flying monkeys are people who support their favorite narcissist. This is a good intro video and the channel has a lot more about this disorder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjZ3f-IXEXU&t=975s
Fleas are behaviors a person picks up by interacting with narcissists too often. In this way, narcissism can be said to be a socially transmissible disease.
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Disclaimer, I am not a psychologist, I have only read about this (and other disorders such as ASPD/psychopathy/sociopathy) extensively. However, that gives me freedom to express my thoughts more openly - a psychologist cannot for "ethical reasons" say certain things such as making value judgements of such people.
I don't have that limitation. I consider it a disease which should for example prevent the person from holding positions of power - the same way psychosis would. The only difference is psychotic people are harmful to both themselves and others and don't hide it, narcissistic people are primarily harmful to others and a re lucid enough to cover it up.
a meta question about this. How is a short sort of musing current political landscape blog post the top on hacker news?
tl;dr we’ve got the politicians that are most aligned with the majority of voters
I have a suspicion that it’s no different than any other highly efficient system. You’ll notice that every time there’s a natural crisis you’ll hear how facility X is the only place in the world where Y is done and now everything Y is going to go up in price[0].
There’s lots of reasons everyone downstream of X doesn’t have backup plans but one that certainly applies to the immediate consumers of Y is that over time market forces shave off any insurance against Y prices.
This phenomenon is well-understood and so most countries intentionally develop backup facilities to X in what they believe are crucial spaces. It’s why the US pays for both ULA and SpaceX (instead of just whichever works better) and pays more for locally grown food and so on.
But someone has to be watching and convince the rest of us that this kind of thing is worth doing and they need to keep doing it for a long time.
What I think happened is The Sort[1] happened. We got better at giving people with the requisite skills their rewards. Previously, you might end up with a smart steely-eyed guy as Flight EECOM at NASA but today that guy has a shot at 100x the wealth on Wall Street or in tech. If you look at the debate between George H W Bush and Ronald Reagan[2] you’ll see a sort of thing that isn’t so common today: they are asked whether the US should be paying for the education of children of people crossing the border with Mexico and where today the highly-optimized politician will respond that he will do what you, the constituent, is asking here[3] and stop paying for these people one way or another - both candidates actually contest that idea and offer a view that’s not populist.
You’ll see this today with the rise of direct to constituent social media. A big part of politicians’ approach today is about What Polls Well. Sen. Warren is the biggest example of this I think. Once the proponent of intelligent policy, she is now most commonly known for highly populist policy - to the extent that she is now often described as a slopulist.
So what I think is the difference is that earlier most politicians were more influenced by smarter people with low time preference and as the constituents became more powerful as a mass, politicians started being influenced primarily by the median person until we eventually have someone perfectly reflective of the electorate. The electorate, for the most part, would like all taxes set as close to zero and all spending set as close to 100% on their own pet interest; and second-order effects are rarely considered.
Therefore, in the common way of all people to declare monocausal roots of events, I declare that refinement culture has caused:
- highly efficient adaptation of politician to populace
- with low tail-risk mitigation
And consequently we’ve got a person who can’t do effective foreign policy running foreign policy because they are very good at politics.
A good self-test I think is “if chair of the Federal Reserve were an elected position would your party of choice have elected a multi millionaire investment banker like Jerome Powell to it?”. I think the answer to this is “no” for either party, yet he has performed his function admirably well, in my opinion.
0: often this is small and facilities X’ take on the same work at slightly raised costs Y’ but sometimes, like in the Thai flooding with HDDs, costs rise greatly
1: A term I first heard from patio11, but it’s related to the idea of refinement culture
2: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok
3: because this is a Republican debate; if it were Democratic Party he would answer that he would do what you, the constituent wants, and assign a new fund to these people who he will declare (in agreement with you) are humans, not illegals and so on. The fact isn’t of significance here. It is whether they can talk the trade-offs of policy with their constituents. The modern leader is “I’m a leader. I need to follow the people”.
That's mistakenly conflating two concepts: the media propaganda in a more general sense of the word (like the pentagon reviewing movie scripts for war propaganda) and the underlying material and ideological reasons for US foreign policy (see natural resources, petrodollar, etc.). It would be a severe mistake to think the current conflict is somehow detached from the "grand chessboard" type of neoconservative thought dominating foreign policy for decades. In other words you shouldn't disagree with the war on Iran because Trump is an idiot, you should disagree because its an horrific atrocious war even if it were run by competent people instead.
Just as a very basic example: 4 presidents in a row have bombed Yemen: Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. This is consensus on very fundamental ideas on US foreign policy. But way more importantly than whether or not you agree with bombing Yemen, you should start to recognize that the real reasons for bombing Yemen or any other conflict are completely absent from public discourse and media.
Also once you broaden your horizon on film a bit it becomes very hard to watch modern mainstream western movies at all. Like watch The Battle of Algiers or any Costa-Gavras movie and you realize most western cinema is at best just infantilizing and at worst outright propaganda.
Like if you watched One Battle After Another and thought it was profound, did you not notice the absence of any real ideological exploration beyond "racism is bad"? What did the caricatured resistance really believe in? What can such a movie really say about "radical" politics on immigration if the liberals who made it have to account for liberals approval and funding of ICE? Like it said nothing at all, that's the issue with everything. We are so politically atrophied that we think its the most political movie ever, but its really apolitical if you think about it a bit more.
I'm reminded of the quote "all models are wrong but some models are useful". I tend to think of generational analysis as overly reductive but, looking at the world, it's hard not to look at the world and blame everything on the baby boomers.
Consider the birth year of the last 5 presidents: Trump (1946), Biden (1942), Obama (1961), W Bush (1946), Clinton (1946). Isn't it a fairly wild coincidence that 3 of the last 5 were born in 1946 (and one more in 1942)? That's the first year of the baby boomer generation.
The term "woke" has been completely distorted but the original meaning is simply to recognize societal (ie systemic) injustice and to recognize that there is such a thing as intergenerational trauma (slavery, specifically). You could also say that the Holocaust caused generational trauma.
But the parents of the baby boomers went through a lot too. First there was the Great Depression and what followed (eg the Dust Bowl for many). It was a decade of social insability and a lack of security. Then came WW2 and then they were the first generation to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation. That's what the baby boomers were born into. So you had baby boomers being raised by people with unresolved trauma (eg "housewife syndrome" [1]). This generation grew up to vote for Ronald Reagan and almost everything bad in today's society can be traced back to Reagan somehow.
This is of course a generalization but baby boomers are the most emotionally immature, traumatized, entitled generation who are terrified to die, easily manipulated and like the pharoahs of old seemingly want to take everythign with them when they die. They were born into one of the greatest eras of wealth creation and did nothing but hoard and squander that opportunity while dismantling the systems that made it possible.
I envy the next generation because they will eventually get to live in a world where all the baby boomers are dead. The problem is that everything may be so screwed by then it might not matter.
"eventually get to live in a world where all the baby boomers are dead"
man, that stings. as a member of the birth class of 1963.
each of us is a product of our times. i wish no ill will on those younger or older than myself. personally, i have lived my life in a way to be a good steward of the world. was it always successful; no.
not malice, perhaps ignorance. please enjoy what is left of the world. i did my best to leave it better than it was when I received it.
if you don't like the world, try to change it. you have agency.
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Absolutely nothing wrong with a coordinated, rapid response to a global pandemic. This was a bright spot in humanity's record, IMO. The corruption of public perception of the response by a handful of individuals is something we should regret.
Quite a bit wrong with it. From the beginning the threat level was exaggerated, especially considering the lack of threat to younger people.
We are still paying the social and economic costs (including sky high cost of living, directly connected to it).
It was also coincidentally very similar to the Event 201 table top exercise a mere six months before between Johns Hopkins, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation (all unelected and unaccountable organisations which this "global" advice came from).
What’s childish is thinking that calling the Department of War by a euphemism changes what it is and always has been. The Department of “Defense” killed a bunch of people Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and countless minor actions. These bubbles of civilization we enjoy are built on adults killing a bunch of people, as necessary, to establish the order that allows more childish people to build social media websites.
It's better to have to justify a discrepancy between your ideal and your bad actions, than to declare that your ideal is behaving badly.
Consider the motivation behind the new nickname.
It’s plainly not an attempt at honesty. Watching almost any speech by Hegseth makes it clear it’s another “tough guy” thing—his latest effort included announcing “no quarter” in the war with Iran, which one supposes he did because it sounds tough, but it’s so incredibly illegal that just issuing that instruction, as he did, even if nothing happens afterward, is specifically illegal.
It’s a modern outgrowth of the conservative belief that we lost Vietnam because we didn’t war crime hard enough (this is a real, and common, thing, talk to republicans old enough and you’ll encounter it often) and that the military’s too soft.
Are you saying there is no difference between the aggressiveness shown by the Department of War since it was renamed vs the years prior to the renaming?
Because it sure looked to me like they renamed the department and immediately started bombing fishing boats, then affirmatively decided to start a war with Iran, all while the guy who came up with the new name goes on TV and screams about how we're free to kill more people now.
Let’s not forget the kidnapping of Maduro, where we killed another ~80 people.