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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Whether they are returned or not, truth is it will make no difference to any of my life concerns as a Greek. It will make the Acropolis museum a little more spectacular. And it may then bring a little more money than before. That’s it. So yeah, I support the return of all stolen treasures in principle, but the truth is that if they were ever returned it would be more cause for a brief swell of national pride and milked for what it’s worth by whichever government happens to be in place than anything of actual consequence.

    Also, by having the artifacts stay at the British Museum, they bear testament to the massive scale extractive exploits of colonialism and how the fates of entire peoples have depended on the favor or disfavor of great powers. I kind of find it more embarrassing for the UK that they are keeping them and every time they refuse to return them it reminds me how rotten and racist the underbelly of western powers is, hidden not-so-well beneath a cultured and democratic veneer.


  • Yes, but Trump does represent a qualitative change. At least there was some consensus in Washington before him, both on domestic and international affairs. That made the US rather predictable. You knew where your values and interest met theirs and where they did not. That is no more. The US is now home to both some of the most forward thinking people and institutions and some of the most influential regressive beliefs. And all helmed by a fan of the latter and whose tempers change by the minute. The US is right now in some regards a bigger source of uncertainty than either Russia or China, erratic and extremely polarized as it has become. And it’s not only markets that hate prolonged uncertainty. Foreign governments and the people do too.








  • Are we still going to refer to them as Putin’s puppets, when the US has been angling for a while now to become the greatest exporter of alt-right ideology? Doesn’t this detract from the fact that the US isn’t exporting democracy anymore (if it ever did) and is instead exporting its degeneration into whatever Bannon/Trump/Musk/Thiel and others want it to become?

    Maybe calling them Putin’s puppets helps discredit them on US soil, but the rest of us see the US go the way of Russia and China. And a bleak future in which most of us will only get to choose between different flavors of authoritarianism…


  • I wish people in general stopped looking for good guys and bad guys. My maxim as I grow older and weary is everyone is awful, unless proven otherwise. Or, in other words, it’s all geopolitics and a complex web of conflicting interests. Combating factions choose their alliances less on principle and more on what serves their long term goals and immediate tactical aims. In the meantime we are fed whatever narrative paints one or the other side “good” and depending on our politics and possible stake in a conflict convince ourselves that we are “on the right side of history”. But history is largely written by the victor and in hindsight it is always easier to say what was good or bad. In the heat of the moment, when lives, money, and land are at stake, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.


  • Yes I know, when all else fails it’s “what’s good for the community”. Oh well, thank you for bothering to make the case for the ban, I understand your points but really do wish more people saw that the splintering into ever more siloed “communities” where no one is seriously challenged (and consequently the lack of common spaces for exposure to radically different perspectives and the challenging of one’s own) is part of what’s wrong with the world right now.

    The more you hear your own views echoed back at you on a regular basis, the more shocking it becomes when you suddenly read something radically different and the harder it is for you then to come to any sort of rapprochement with the other. This is noticeable everywhere today, left and right, sadly also quite a lot in “liberal” spaces, leading many to think that liberals have become intolerant of anything other than the smell of their own farts. Where is this leading us? Nowhere good I think.

    So perhaps we should seek to challenge bans by default rather than find justification for them. I reflexively tend to scrutinize the censoring of posts and people for that reason. And do wish more ‘heretical’ viewpoints were allowed in here. It’s not like “neocon” (it’s in the name, so hardly a troll) expressed any fringe or criminally insane views or like he attacked other users. Ah anyway, why do I bother I do not know, it’s probably already too late. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to bring the world back from the brink of collapse. It is easier to let it slide.