Your interlocutor is somewhat manipulative and not in good faith.
>Quoting "Why America Dropped the Bomb, Donald Kagan, 1995" strongly implied either a book or a paywalled scientific article (he even said directly to me in discord that it was a "peer reviewed article"). It is neither. Since you already had the site open, why did you not provide the link to it?
>Donald Kagan, like his children, is a politically very active person agitating for regime change wars. He has skin in the game. That Alperovitz would get such a response from the hawks was not surprising.
>For the most part his rebuttal of Alperovitz was a value judgement, including the passage quoted by cope. There is again, no reason whatsoever to take Kagan's claims on good faith.
>Secondary and tertiary sources usually get beaten by primary sources. I smacked out pretty much all the most important people in the US military, and civilians who were involved in the project, and their view on the project.
(1) Hitertho, I have cited three authors, Kagan, Bernstein and Sadao. All of them are scholars. All of them disagree with your views (despite your insinuation that no credible academic would do so). Kagan's extensive credentials are available on Yale's website, here.
(2) I concede that I mistakenly characterized Kagan's article as peer-reviewed off-site; that mistake bears no relevance to the veracity of Kagain's analysis (which you have yet to challenge beyond gainsaying and appealing to his alleged partisanship). The reason I did not provide a link is because I had downloaded the article as a PDF.
(3) All views on whether the use of atomic weaponry was appropriate, including Alperovitz's (whose views are challenged by modern revisionists), are inherently value judgements.
(4) Secondary sources are predicated on, and include references to, primary material. That is evidenced by the sources I have presented here.
Spoiler for Cookie#2:
If someone after this wants to refute my argument, a good place to start is to tell me why and how Nimitz, Eisenhower, Leahy, etc. were wrong. It's not being done, for obvious reasons.
On the basis that speculation and moral judgements cannot be disproven, Nimitz, Eisenhower and Leahy weren't "wrong". Notwithstanding, the following points need to be taken into consideration:
(1) No one has speculated that Japan wouldn't have been defeated sans atomic weaponry. It has instead been argued that there is significant evidence indicating that use of the a-bomb shortened the war and overcame the need for the US to invade Japan.
(2) It is is not surprising that conventional military leaders like Eisenhower, Leahy and Nimitz were deeply sceptical of the a-bomb, given the extent to which it revolutionized human conflict (and therefore challenged the military orthodoxy). Even so, and to the best of my knowledge, all three men were advocates of the bombing campaigns and constrictive blockades which, by your own admission, caused more civilian suffering than the atomic attacks.
(3) The comments of these men do not indicate that Japan agreed to the Potsdam terms solely because of the Soviet intervention (which is your main thesis). Nor do they prove that alignment with orthodox position is anti-intellectual or ahistorical. They serve only to represent the view that the use of atomic weaponry was not necessary to end the war (a point which, as mentioned above, is largely undisputed).
Spoiler for Cookie#3:
>Conversely, the last thing in the world I'd ever take on a first basis, would be a politicians speech. The Jewel Voice Broadcast, which btw. doesn't even mention the word surrender, did not have the task of explaining the process of decision making at the chrysanthemum throne. It had the task of getting people to chill down, and also not admit that the military had already been beaten, so indirectly threatening them with a Wunderwaffe was convenient.
My interlocutor appeared to claim that the Imperial Rescript on Surrender specifically mentioned the Soviet entry into the war as the reason for the surrender. I posted the transcript of the speech to show that this was false.
Spoiler for Cookie#4:
>The Supreme Council of Japan didn't meet on August 6th after Hiroshima to discuss surrender, it did so on August 9th. It didn't meet on that day because of Nagasaki - Nagasaki happened when the meeting was already long ongoing.
If Hiroshima had scared them into submission, they would not have waited 74 hours. Instead their meeting happened at the earliest time possible after the Soviet invasion commenced.
The reasons for the delay were as follows:
(1) Leading gov't figures were not immediately sure, either of the extent of the damage or whether atomic weapons had actually been used (Togo confirmed that atomic weaponry had been used through American broadcasts on the 7th and called a meeting of senior cabinet minsters the same day).
(2) The militarists, in typically defiant fashion, sought to minimize the impact of the bomb and obstructed the meeting of the Principals out of a zealous and delusional opposition to surrender (which they knew was the purpose of summoning the council).
Notwithstanding, even if the leadership did not meet until the 9th, the decision to convene the Supreme Council came on the 8th, a day before the Soviet declaration of war. This disproves the theory that the Principals were unmoved by the bombings and only hurriedly met after the Russian intervention.
>Finally, again: The Japanese had suffered from 66 conventional large scale bombing runs in addition to the two nuclear ones. The damage from the nukes wasn't worse. From the Japanese perspective, there was not much of a game changer. The US had had, and used the ability to level entire cities long before Hiroshima. Neither Donald Kagan, nor anyone in this thread so far, has provided any compelling argument or even evidence as to why these nukes should have had that effect, never mind presented any counterargument to the many arguments and primary sources presented by me.
No one has argued that the damage caused by the atomic bombings was more extensive than the entirety of the conventional allied bombing campaign. The obvious distinction between atomic weaponry and conventional weaponry (which the Japanese leadership recognized) was the magnitude of the destruction which the former could cause in a single strike. It rendered the hold-out strategy insisted upon by the military obsolete, and, as the sources show, clearly influenced the emperor in his decision to break the deadlock between the factions.
Setting that aside, the point you make here is self-contradictory: on the one hand you want us to believe that the atomic bombings were so uniquely evil in their destructivity that they violated a criminal threshold; on the other you try to pass them off as being routine, as being so indistinct in their effect from conventional carpet bombing that the Japanese leadership was neither shocked nor moved by them.
As far as I can tell, no, but it's not not white genocide either.
Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer
So, you are kinda proving me correct. Had the Cesar not start and Octavian not finish the job, that leisure class would have caused the eventual demise of the Republic. Instead Octavian prevented decline and ensured centuries of Pax Romana.
However, nature took her course and due to centuries of prosperity permanent leisure class established itself again - that time it gestated and was also empowered by oikophobic Christianity that became spiritual poison of Roman people in 300s AD. Julian could have been another Ceasar, but unfortunately his early death prevented another miracle
Take it easy, Edward Gibbon. Most historians don't ascribe Christianity as the primary cause for the fall of the Western Roman Empire anymore.
So this supposed cycle of the collapse of whiteWestern civilizations due to self-hatred happened to Rome, except when it didn't happen to the Republic, but that actually still proves it right because it would've happened if it didn't not happen? Huh? It seems like your theory just simply can't be wrong.
Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer
You were the one who said "its okay to be white" is bad because "racists" use it. If that's the logic, then you should make same conclusion in regards to BLM, but instead you go on a rationalization diatribe. Again, this hypocrisy is a perfect example of oikophobic sentiment.
Well, shoot, that phrase made it to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols for a reason, so racists probably do use it. Is it too much for you to admit that you didn’t know that? The fact that they can trick non-racists to also use it and muddy the waters of who believes what doesn’t really change that it’s also a code phrase used by racists. White nationalists use dog whistles like it all the time in order to find each other and sound less extreme normal people.
I don’t see how Black Lives Matter fits into this. I’m aware of some of the excesses of people involved, but the idea that activists for reducing poverty or violence against blacks in the U.S. is functionally equivalent to white supremacists is just absurd. For one thing, American blacks are more vulnerable as a group than whites.
Originally Posted by Legio_Italica
One brand of extremism is treated with derision and condemnation; the other with increasingly mandatory ritual praise and celebration on penalty of political, social and economic repercussions. It doesn’t matter that immigration doesn’t correlate with local crime rates in the US, or that empirical analysis doesn’t indicate conclusive evidence of racial differences in fatal police shootings in the US when controlling for contextual factors (123). Political power is seldom predicated on factual consistency. There will always be those sympathizers on either end of the spectrum who shrug and say “well I don’t agree with that movement/ideology but society left these people with no other choice” as though reciting a profession of faith.
As it relates to allusions to civilizational decline, the problems caused by these racial divisions tearing at the fabric of society are self evident. However, that doesn’t mean the political and corporate interests riding on the exploitation of these divisions seem to mind the medium to long term costs. Even in the immediate sense, the most expensive riots in US insurance history don’t appear to have fazed the political or corporate establishment in the slightest. The ability of “western civilization” to weather the elements of rot underlying the storm really comes down to whether or not it can survive the shameless rent-seeking corruption and apathy of its various leaders and those they enable for an indefinite period of time in the midst of numerous external threats. It’s not like the phenomenon is unique to the US. We’re seeing the same in Europe with regard to Islamic extremism and nativism. I wouldn’t call it oikophobia or weave it into some theory of history, but it’s obviously not a positive development, and it’s not going to “go away” until and unless those in power stop perpetuating it for political and monetary gain.
Okay, but white liberal paternalist racism is a lot less harmful than white supremacist racism is. The latter is rooted in targeted hatred of blacks in a way that the former simply isn’t, and that makes the claim that both forms are equally bad a much harder pill to swallow. It also makes it kind of easy to question the sincerity of anti-racist people who talk on and on about how widespread and bad the first one is and never really say anything about the second kind on their own initiative.
What I think is interesting is that your second and third source say that minorities are more likely to be on the receiving end of non-lethal force and that minorities are disproportionately killed by police, (1 and 2), respectively. Your first and third sources even seem to be at odds: the first one accounts all disparity in police shootings to crime and there is no real disproportion, while the third one says that minorities are disproportionately killed by black and white officers equally. Just reading the abstracts of those papers alone show it’s not nearly as clear-cut “there is no real racism here” as you make it seem. In fact, there has been concerns about the white supremacist presence in local law enforcement for some years now, something that is just intolerable to me. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/...w-enforcement/ https://theappeal.org/the-epidemic-o...-4992cb7ad97a/
Even if the number of racial supremacists working in police departments is low enough that it is not a concern for some people, it still means that we might need to shift where one finds racial bias in police forces. If only a few officers are quite racist, could it be that many more officers are a little racist? Sen. Tim Scott has famously talked about being pulled over seven times in a single year, and I think that profiling and escalation are the real marks of police misconduct nowadays. Black men are perceived as being more threatening, so they are pulled over more often (during daytime) and searched more even if many police departments have had a hard time finding any contraband (1, 2, 3). People who taste the police use of force are disproportionately black, there is a significant racial disparity in misdemeanor arrests or marijuana drug charges and receive longer sentences for similar drug law violations.
This is not an exhaustive explanation, but put together, racial disparities in law enforcement do not even need to be caused white supremacists if widespread tendencies of profiling and escalation alone do the trick.
And by the way, it is the insurance costs of riots in this past year have been higher than average. But put it in perspective. The amount of damage over the course of weeks all across America is about as much as a large wildfire, and much less than a hurricane. The last riot of a similar insurance loss was L.A. in 1992, where much of it was localized, targeting small businesses, and arguably much more damaging than this year’s. Wildfires and hurricanes are at more damaging and a lot more regular than these riots, but they don’t appear to have fazed the political or corporate establishment very much either. There are even political fiascos surrounding those events too, but we’re hardly being unraveled by them, now are we?
Nazism attempted to reconcile conservative, nationalist ideology with a socially radical doctrine. In so doing, it became a profoundly revolutionary movement—albeit a largely negative one. Rejecting rationalism, liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and all movements of international cooperation and peace, it stressed instinct, the subordination of the individual to the state, and the necessity of blind and unswerving obedience to leaders appointed from above. It also emphasized the inequality of men and races and the right of the strong to rule the weak; sought to purge or suppress competing political, religious, and social institutions; advanced an ethic of hardness and ferocity; and partly destroyed class distinctions by drawing into the movement misfits and failures from all social classes. Although socialism was traditionally an internationalist creed, the radical wing of Nazism knew that a mass base existed for policies that were simultaneously anticapitalist and nationalist. However, after Hitler secured power, this radical strain was eliminated.
The history of Nazism after 1934 can be divided into two periods of about equal length. Between 1934 and 1939 the party established full control of all phases of life in Germany. With many Germans weary of party conflicts, economic and political instability, and the disorderly freedom that characterized the last years of the Weimar Republic (1919–33), Hitler and his movement gained the support and even the enthusiasm of a majority of the German population. In particular, the public welcomed the strong, decisive, and apparently effective government provided by the Nazis. Germany’s endless ranks of unemployed rapidly dwindled as the jobless were put to work in extensive public-works projects and in rapidly multiplying armaments factories. Germans were swept up in this orderly, intensely purposeful mass movement bent on restoring their country to its dignity, pride, and grandeur, as well as to dominance on the European stage. Economic recovery from the effects of the Great Depression and the forceful assertion of German nationalism were key factors in Nazism’s appeal to the German population. Further, Hitler’s continuous string of diplomatic successes and foreign conquests from 1934 through the early years of World War II secured the unqualified support of most Germans, including many who had previously opposed him.
It’s certainly en vogue to draw rhetorical parallels to European Imperialism or to the Trump Administration, but there’s an explicitly communist regime whose ultra-nationalist, expansionist, murderous state-run corporatocracy is a more fitting model for comparison, both in terms of its totalitarian evil and its ascendant threat to the entire world.
Spoiler for Totalitarian Control in Nazi Germany and Communist China:
Spoiler for Lebensraum in Nazi Germany and Communist China:
Spoiler for Socio-Ethnic Engineering in Nazi Germany and Communist China:
As for the moral equivalence between fascism and communism, I think this article provides a decent anecdotal synopsis:
Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.
The basic facts of the Great Leap Forward have long been known to scholars. Dikötter’s work is noteworthy for demonstrating that the number of victims may have been even greater than previously thought, and that the mass murder was more clearly intentional on Mao’s part, and included large numbers of victims who were executed or tortured, as opposed to “merely” starved to death. Even the previously standard estimates of 30 million or more, would still make this the greatest mass murder in history.
While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had only a modest cultural impact. When Westerners think of the great evils of world history, they rarely think of this one. In contrast to the numerous books, movies, museums, and and remembrance days dedicated to the Holocaust, we make little effort to recall the Great Leap Forward, or to make sure that society has learned its lessons. When we vow “never again,” we don’t often recall that it should apply to this type of atrocity, as well as those motivated by racism or anti-semitism.
The fact that Mao’s atrocities resulted in many more deaths than those of Hitler does not necessarily mean he was the more evil of the two. The greater death toll is partly the result of the fact that Mao ruled over a much larger population for a much longer time. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no wish to diminish its significance. But the vast scale of Chinese communist atrocities puts them in the same general ballpark. At the very least, they deserve far more recognition than they currently receive.
Elector (and winning) results based on 50000 simulations.
I got the poll aggregates from 538 at 28th of October 2020. I made a number of "voter blocks" equal to 350 + electors x50. I.e. Pennsylvania (20 electors) has 1350 "voter blocks" while Alaska (3 electors) has 500 "voter blocks". I assigned to each "voter block" a chance to vote for Trump, Biden or independent based on the aggregate state polls of 538.
I adjusted based on a few assumptions.
Whomever wins the state, wins the electors. For Nebraska and Maine, each district gives one elector and the state winner gets the state's 2 electors.
Then, I tallied the electors for each candidate. No state was won by independents. Sorry West, Sorry Libertarians, Sorry Greens. Better luck next time.
Assumptions:
1% "hidden" Trump vote (I.e. voters that said they will vote for Biden but will vote for Trump)
slightly higher enthusiasm for Republicans and ability to "bring out" their voters. I.e. slightly more Republican leaning voters would actually vote than Democrat leaning ones.
About 2% of the mailed votes will be considered invalid or arrive to late to count. Of these, 60% will be for Biden and 40% for Trump.
The Republicans will not stop the counting of mailed votes, at least in states that matter.
NOTE: I consider as a "tie" everything below 273 electors. I.e. if the "winner" ends up with 269-272 electors, it will be the rogue electors of the electoral college that will call the election.
As you can see, in the 2020 USA elections there's a 13% chance that the rogue electors will be the ones deciding the election.
We're getting a little too far into hypotheticals here so I'm going to wander all over the show...
But the point of armour on the torso is to protect the most vital parts of the body. You're far more likely to survive a stab to the arm than you are to the kidney. Even in this period one could sometimes survive a severed arm, but not a disembowelment (now is a different story. Happened to my cousin, skateboard injury, loss of a couple of meters of intestine... nasty story for another day).
There's a balance to be made - the weight of armour vs the requirement for movement vs the cost of production in both monetary and manpower terms vs tactical flexibility vs logistical requirements for maintenance and supply. We can't reveal all of these from individual finds. But if you're trying to give the broadest protection to the widest range of unit types via your production chain, rationalising the most important types of protection for a wide variety of situations is probably helpful. That might explain why torso protection is seen more often than arm, or leg. Because it was more universally applicable to more people in more situations.
Then there's the fact that Roman soldiers, especially in the early and mid imperial period, were expected to march. A lot. It was not out of the question for the same unit to see combat in modern Spain and Egypt in the same year, travelling by foot half the way. Most medieval knights with their full body suits of armour might have travelled a few dozen or a hundred miles, in their entire lives, and then would have marched out of full armour and only trained in it. So from a purely practical perspective, weight would have been a real consideration, given that they were only expected to be in actual combat very very occasionally. Add to this the different climactic requirements of fighting in Anatolia vs Scotland and we might start to see why some additional protections might have been impractical in many situations - even if it offered better survivability.
Re the shield: it is both defensive and offensive in it's use - meaning it moves and is vulnerable to being grabbed, pulled, tugged, shoved etc - and while this happens, a shield covers the majority of the arm holding it
There are so many unknowables here. Armour was far from uniform in nature even within individual units. Some may have had extra elements that others did not. This piece may be representative or might be a fluke discovery of a rare kind.
So plenty of questions and uncertainties. Great for archaeologist's ongoing job security.
Last edited by Flinn; November 09, 2020 at 03:00 AM.
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII
1. Be focused and relevant to the topic(s) being discussed.
2. Demonstrate a well-developed, insightful and nuanced understanding of the topic(s) it is discussing.
3. Be logically coherent, well organized and communicate its points effectively.
4. Support its contentions with verifiable evidence, either in the form of links or references.
5. Not be deliberately vexatious to other users.
I doubt the makers of the competition considered copy pastes.
POTF 38 - Vote
Originally Posted by Cookiegod
Your interlocutor is somewhat manipulative and not in good faith.
