"Wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength, and wars usually
cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength. Agreement or disagreement emerges from the shuffling of the same set of factors. Thus each factor is capable of promoting war or peace... When nations prepare to fight one another, they have contradictory expectations of the likely duration and outcome of war. When those predictions, however, cease to be contradictory, the war is almost certain to end." - Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (1988)
Recently in Singed Couplets Category
They say that every generation is the same. Fathers and mothers alike are disappointed in their sons and daughters, these weird amalgamations of the previous generation. Faces so familiar yet so utterly alien. We respond increasingly well to animation as it gets closer and closer to realistic, but suddenly are disgusted when it is almost but not quite real, when the faces are real, except for something alien and almost indescribable. The uncanny valley. Children are like that sometimes to parents. They look almost like mom, almost like dad, a little bit from an uncle or an aunt, maybe grandma's eyes. It's a miracle and a curse all at once. The worst of parents try to shape their child's life like a marionette, a vicarious second chance. The best try to guide, show the steps that worked for them, hide the sadness when their favorites don't work.
Stalin moved his old mother into an enormous dacha with servants, but she would not leave a single tiny room intended for the maid. He visited her, and once she asked hesitantly what it was exactly that her son had become. I am like the czar was, he explained in the only way that would make sense to her. Better if you'd have stayed in seminary school, she concluded.
A generation later, Stalin's son Yakov died in a German prisoner of war camp, after his father refused to exchange him for a German field marshal, saying simply "I have no son".
The myth of history is that we will not repeat the mistakes of our parents.
Stalin moved his old mother into an enormous dacha with servants, but she would not leave a single tiny room intended for the maid. He visited her, and once she asked hesitantly what it was exactly that her son had become. I am like the czar was, he explained in the only way that would make sense to her. Better if you'd have stayed in seminary school, she concluded.
A generation later, Stalin's son Yakov died in a German prisoner of war camp, after his father refused to exchange him for a German field marshal, saying simply "I have no son".
The myth of history is that we will not repeat the mistakes of our parents.
There's a phenomenon in certain circles known as the discovery of population. We're used to the idea of people being a national resource, familiar with the perception by both the extreme right and extreme left during the 20th century of the value of having more and more people in a state. More workers => more industry, more soldiers => more power. But this is a fundamentally modern perception of population. Prior to Napoleon, the huge population of France (larger than many other states combined, for centuries) was considered a liability. Three times the population didn't yield a multiple of power, but a multiple of burdens. It just meant more damned half starved peasants whose necks needed boots. And boots were expensive and more fun to use kicking other countries in the dangly bits.
Napoleon democratized warfare overnight. He realized that a hundred thousand eager volunteers kicked the crap out of ten thousand crack troops with years of training. And if they failed, it took him a couple weeks to round up another hundred thousand volunteers whereas it took another decade to train up a few regiments of shock troops. Napoleon fielded the largest armies ever seen in Europe and used them to conquer the better part of the continent. And every time disaster struck, every 400,000 man Grande Armée that disintegrated into the Russian wastes, more men waited at home to be handed a rifle and a uniform.
Napoleon was the most dangerous man to arrive in Europe since the Khan died at the gates of Vienna, not because he conquered (conquerors are a dime a dozen in European history), but because he woke the beast of the people. For all of history the power of the people was a force to be beaten down, not something to be tamed. It was too dangerous to tame, it could turn on the master's hand too easily.
That's democracy, shed of elections and millennia of elevated discourse on natural rights and freedom. Democracy in its rawest form, the beating heart underneath all those pretty words and infrastructure, is just the people moved to action. The institutions, the parliaments and congresses and republics and constitutions, are the bit and bridle and saddle that turn the strength of the people into something useful and constructive. It's a fine line that cynical governments walk with their people: break a mount and it's tame but worthless, be too lax with the whip though and it will lose fear and throw you.
Experts keep saying that Mousavi will negotiate and cut a deal and that will be the end of it. Experts don't understand democracy, they think that people follow leaders. If Yeltsin hadn't climbed on top of that tank, Russians wouldn't have returned to communism, someone else would have climbed onto the tank. In the mythology of westerns, wild mustangs will sometimes take a rider, but they won't ride with him forever, they will leave him if he becomes unworthy. You can chain a wild horse, but that doesn't make it a fucking toy pony.
Napoleon democratized warfare overnight. He realized that a hundred thousand eager volunteers kicked the crap out of ten thousand crack troops with years of training. And if they failed, it took him a couple weeks to round up another hundred thousand volunteers whereas it took another decade to train up a few regiments of shock troops. Napoleon fielded the largest armies ever seen in Europe and used them to conquer the better part of the continent. And every time disaster struck, every 400,000 man Grande Armée that disintegrated into the Russian wastes, more men waited at home to be handed a rifle and a uniform.
Napoleon was the most dangerous man to arrive in Europe since the Khan died at the gates of Vienna, not because he conquered (conquerors are a dime a dozen in European history), but because he woke the beast of the people. For all of history the power of the people was a force to be beaten down, not something to be tamed. It was too dangerous to tame, it could turn on the master's hand too easily.
That's democracy, shed of elections and millennia of elevated discourse on natural rights and freedom. Democracy in its rawest form, the beating heart underneath all those pretty words and infrastructure, is just the people moved to action. The institutions, the parliaments and congresses and republics and constitutions, are the bit and bridle and saddle that turn the strength of the people into something useful and constructive. It's a fine line that cynical governments walk with their people: break a mount and it's tame but worthless, be too lax with the whip though and it will lose fear and throw you.
Experts keep saying that Mousavi will negotiate and cut a deal and that will be the end of it. Experts don't understand democracy, they think that people follow leaders. If Yeltsin hadn't climbed on top of that tank, Russians wouldn't have returned to communism, someone else would have climbed onto the tank. In the mythology of westerns, wild mustangs will sometimes take a rider, but they won't ride with him forever, they will leave him if he becomes unworthy. You can chain a wild horse, but that doesn't make it a fucking toy pony.
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