"They would drain the blood from an innocent child...
...and drink it."
And here I thought that I could not be shocked. Behold the fate of what one might call America's first attempt to export democracy:
(Warning: don't even think about watching this video on a full stomach. But a strong drink or two - or possibly even three - might be in order.)
I mean, what can one say? What hope is there, for the people of Liberia?
A thousand years of Christianity? A hundred years of Islam? Ten years of neo-colonialism?
Suggested wrong answers: liberal democracy; UN intervention...
Hat tip
--
God help the while, a bad world I say.
--
God help the while, a bad world I say.
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References
it seems, is what I gained from reading the history of Liberia after this post.
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)Who *@&%ing knew?
Here's a shocker for you: you can even take away the tribalism & superstition part, and still get the same result.
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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)Jordan, how many Americans, today, do you suppose really understand the state of play in Sub-Saharan Africa today?
Don't you think that this documentary might help to bring them up to speed?
Why does this post seem to upset you so much?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )It doesn't affect their day-to-day lives so they don't care.
I alternate between calling for nuking the more uncivilized of our species and being indifferent. The former because such people have no right to live in this day and age with such beliefs and the latter because the people in those societies don't seem to care all that much.
In any event, education is the best long-term solution to savagery. Education is superstition's worst enemy.
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| parent )"...I alternate between calling for nuking the more uncivilized of our species and being indifferent..."
How...ummm...interesting...
"Education is superstition's worst enemy."
Well, gee - and here I would have thought that, for the most part "education" is superstition's best friend!
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent ).
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )...of tipping over into the dark side.
imo
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )...to think for himself & the eyes to see for himself is in danger of tipping over into the dark side.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )did the forvm become a Star Wars fanfic site while I was out today?
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )it's very juvenile though.
--~At times like these I am reminded of the immortal words of Socrates when he said...."I drank what?"
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| parent ).
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )being angry is all it takes? I guess we're all dark side now.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )....in Hank disturbing.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )...to tipping over into the dark side...
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I mean, it's typically (for v.) gestural - not a trace of a syllogism to be seen - but the general point is one that, I'd think, isn't too far off the reservation: one has to have Hobbes before one's Locke, as some military man put it at the start of the latest Iraqi misadventure.
Unless you're objecting to the fact that no one really thinks liberal democracy-spreading is the cure to the many ills of African social and political life. I've never seen it suggested, anyway; that was a little out-of-left-field.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )that short-term policy projects from the UN, world bank, peace corps, etc. is *all there is or all there will be*. The assumption that people have to choose one or another "answer". Smart or at least smarter is the insight that one doesn't turn tribalism off with a switch, or from the outside...and that most of the people *actually working* on providing opportunities in a place like Liberia, Sierra Leone, the frickin Balkans understand that everyone willing to help can play a role (everybody from missionaries to tourists to microlenders to security experts), that change comes slowly, that engagement, economic opportunity & education are key....
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )...but I certainly agree that "one doesn't turn tribalism off with a switch, or from the outside."
And I'm even tempted by the view that "engagement, economic opportunity & education are key" - even though that view positively reeks of neo-conservatism.
But, on the whole, I fear that Mencius Moldbug is probably right: what Liberia really needs is their very own Lord Cromer.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Liberia needed order at nearly all cost before, and it didn't get it. It currently has order and a decent regime, so there's no reason to be foolish about this whole business.
I really do get the idea that any order is better than no order. It's the fundamental truth which underlies how the US occupation was far worse for the average (non-Kurdish) Iraqi than Saddam's rule. It's just that at some point the person in charge gets doddering or simply dies. And then what? That's always been the question we have to work backward from.
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| parent )Quite right.
I put it off for as long as I could, but eventually I had no choice but to admit that most everything that really mattered was - ugh - purely empirical.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent ).
--I blame it all on the Internet
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)...it's not all that often that they drain the blood from an innocent child and drink it.
Especially these days, when most church leaders are about as lefty as you are.
Distinctions. They're so important.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Well, it must be true if you heard about it on the internet.
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| parent )...you preferred not to watch the documentary.
I wish you'd give it a try. I mean, it's not like the Vice guys are a bunch of reactionaries, like me. Not at all: so far as I can tell, they're a bunch of gonzo lefties.
It's possible, of course, that "General Butt-Nekked" is exaggerating for effect - but, given the numerous accounts of the ongoing trafficking in human bits & pieces, for magical purposes, in sub-Saharan Africa (easily available to anybody who's the least bit curious about such stuff) - I found that particular bit of his narrative all too plausible.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Scribbling down furious notes about the promiscuity of Samoans, while the natives tittered in the background. Recognize a pose when you see one (unless you find it too delicious to disbelieve.)
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| parent )...to see you agree with me about that silly old fraud, Margaret Mead, that I'm strongly tempted to call it a day.
But, just because I'm evil, I can't help suggesting that you google "trafficking albino parts" and follow some of the links.
Do you really think that they're all just making it up?
And that's just the beginning.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )There was a story on it on 20/20, or one of those shows, a while back - heart-breaking images of albino children missing arms and legs.
Shocking stuff.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )If to live, in such circumstances, is to be lucky.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )is aesthetic outrage, since a video is far more visceral than reading about Nazi medical experiments. I did post pictures of the victims of US bombing in Iraq, but of course that whole adventure can get explained away easily as a "mistake". Personally, I find a picture or video of a parent sitting next to a pile of meat that used to be their child more horrifying than your video, but I guess my tastes aren't as refined as yours.
If you want to embed videos, you need to use the "Full HTML" posting option. That means that you can't use the bbcode (square bracket) attributes in the text, everything has to be pure HTML (angle brackets).
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )went unpunished, and may be still living with us today.
This, many decades after Beethoven, Kleist and so forth.
Dr Sauerbruch knew, and did not speak.
What vinteuil really wants to say - there is really no alternative to the export of liberal democracy.
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| parent )but I'm pretty sure that's exactly the opposite of what he's saying. The reason I tire of his diaries is because of the hinted at but never explicitly stated reason why liberal democracy will never work in Africa or among minorities in general. You'll need to read some Steve Sailer to get the background.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )-- I guess v. doesn't want to tip his hat, or his hand -- look here.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )...to Mencius Moldbug's maunderings.
When he's good, he's very very good. But when he's bad, he's horrid.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Let's not go spoiling it by comparing notes on when he's good, and when he's not so good.
(A friend of mine sent me a spare copy of Sartor Resartus recently; now I re-stumble across MM, to see one of his not-infrequent paeans to Carlyle. It's serendipity.)
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )...I could ever have had a friend willing to send me his spare copy of *Sartor Resartus* - I might not be so twisted, now.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent ).
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )what a giant pile of mush. Reading that reminded my of the running gag in Airplane where everyone who heard Ted Stryker tell his story committed suicide to make it end. This guy is apparently finding it hard to be transgressive in the current "leftist order" as well.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )is not his strong suit.
And, you know, it is hard to be transgressive these days - but he's making a better show of it than some guy photographing himself taking a dump in a basin of holy water.
I'll give him some credit for that.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )as if being transgressive by itself is something to aspire to. It's like a little kid who keeps making noises because it upsets his siblings - no semantic content, just little farty noises to get a rise out of someone.
If you have a reason to be transgressive, go for it. But I seriously doubt this guy wants a full fledged return to hereditary aristocracy, or if he is he hasn't thought it through. If he's taking about some sort of "elected king" he hasn't thought it through either.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )I'm not really impressed by his, uh, call it 'positive' political opinions. They aspire to being crankery, for the most part.
But he wrote something once - and, really, it was on the basis of this that I still check in - that struck me as pretty insightful. It went something like: 'Not believing in democracy nowadays is like not believing in God in 1789'.
Maybe you don't think that's so interesting, which is OK. But it's as if the notion of democratic legitimacy forms a kind of horizon, beyond which we simply can't see. It's a fine work-a-day hypothesis that there's really nothing beyond that horizon (aside from the occasional 'Here Be Dragons' sign), but it's also a hypothesis that isn't often put through its paces.
Anyway, I think that horizon is a curious feature of our political thinking - and MM's occasional 'acting out' does, occasionally, put it into some relief.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )I guess if you ignore the fact that all those forms have been tried throughout history there may be something to some sort of weird nostalgia for them. Yes, you occasionally get a philosopher-king, but they're in the distinct minority. And most of the people I read who hold these views seem to identify themselves with the aristocracy, when of course it's far more likely that they'll be down in the pig s*&t with the other 99% of the population.
It's not clear that democracy is the "best" or most enduring form of government, it could change from within or more likely be challenged by the Chinese model. A viable technocratic model may emerge. But I really don't see it retrogressing into the past forms that he's talking about.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )It seems to me like the technocratic model is the only alternative on the horizon - and it's not so clear to me that it's an alternative (in the sense of a wholly separate option), so much as a related shoot that's grown alongside the more flowery democratic vine. Both, I think, come from the soil of early modern European absolutism - the state bureaucracy being absolutism's 'positive' legacy; democratic legitimacy, its negation.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )certainly came out of negation, but I guess my feeling is that we've become so far removed from the actual experience of monarchial tyranny (I can't think of any current example other than North Korea) that people are more open to being less absolutist in their demands for freedom and representation and are willing to trade a portion away in exchange for military and economic security. That also explain the rose-colored glasses view of monarchs and aristocracy.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )as education lags increasingly behind the complexity of politics & the economy. It's easy to forget we were still an agricultural nation up until WWII, and that much of American life & governance were conducted by what you might call handshake politics. This was true well into the 70s where I grew up. Not that there wasn't endemic corruption of political offices...but it mattered less. Now every aspect of our lives from bank balances, mortgage values, job security, water & food quality, homeland security, health care, news, telecom/internet, etc. is affected directly & indirectly by gov't regulation and/or the decisions of big corporations.
We're effectively becoming a technocracy as it is. None of us can possibly understand or evaluate the jobs of every single snivel servant paid to make decisions affecting different aspects of our lives. Alienation & insecurity are inevitable, especially for people who chose to live as far from big cities as possible to avoid exactly that kind of codependent existence. Nostalgia may only be part of it: if we've already given up much of the rugged independence of a Jeffersonian democracy, why *not* go back to an aristocratic model? At least there decisions are made for you in a humanly comprehensible manner.
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )and spectacularly unsuitable to the modern world. The notion of the Republic seems the be the best compromise for large scale governance. A Republic is, depending on your viewpoint, either the best or worst of all worlds: we delegate power for fixed terms, thus providing mandate for tough, necessary and unpopular decisions, insulating the elected from the whims of the electors.
A monarch is inscrutable, beyond questioning. Not only is he not humanly comprehensible, he derives his power not from the consent of the governed but from divine right. They talk to trees. They suffer from teeny weenie syndrome and in the case of Kaiser Bill, they start world wars.
The Snivel Servants may be perfectly understood, individually. They make rulings based on law and with its mandate. Those who live far from cities these days benefit most from The System: look at Senator Lunatick Shelby from Missouri, extorting more pork. All those emptied out western states, each with two hog senators, abusing their powers, leveraging Jeffersonian Democracy, that is to say the inequality of representation, to their benefit.
America was established by elitists for elitists. If anything, we could use a bit more democracy and less republican sentiment.
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| parent )(by "we" I mean anyone who has knowledge of history". Most any political model works, more or less, when times are good to not so bad. Even a despotism will work as long as the despot isn't too despotic. It's at the margins, under stress, that the differences emerge. I think the problem that most conservatives of the monarchist/royalist/aristocratic type have with democracy is it's pliancy - there's always a temptation to think that a single smart individual can come up with better policies than the horsetrading and bickering of a democracy. In some cases it might even be true. But that pliancy and ability to change under pressure is a benefit as well, it acts as a giant pressure release for the population at large. Maybe my knowledge of history isn't that complete, but I can't recall where a more or less functioning democracy has undergone the kind of revolution that have occurred under monarchies or totalitarian systems. One of the surprising things about the dissolution of the USSR was how peaceful it was compared to overthrows of totalitarian systems in the past (although I think the government actively managed it to be that way).
Yes, modern life is complex and not everyone is educated enough to make sense of large parts of it. But democracy has a self-correcting feedback loop built into it. Governments make mistakes all the time, but the fear of losing office is quite a bit different than the fear of losing ones head, and tends to make for a somewhat more flexible reaction and a more reasoned response to problems.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )That's a very keen observation, I think.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )I don't think there's anything incomprehensible about political decisions in the US, just distaste at how they were arrived at.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Most people wouldn't have the faintest notion of how interstate contract law is managed.
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| parent )If you can't evaluate based on the issues -- and how many of us, can, really? -- then you have to evaluate based on the people.
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| parent )Another part is the increasing distaste folks have for living in a society where a lot of different people get access to the levers of power.
The outright racism which has been cropping up after Obama's election is part of this, I think. Some people just aren't cool with the idea of a black dude winning, not really.
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| parent )If it's belief that democracy in some way produces or is even likely to produce "good" policies or leaders, I'm not even sure I buy into a unitary "good" that ignores individual interests, never mind the idea that a beauty contest will produce such a beast.
If it's belief that it's necessary as a form of polity-stabilization, well, I might be on-board with the reactionaries of 2009 on that one.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )I think that choice of words had more to do with delivering a dig than anything else. But the content - and, thinking about it, maybe the year he used was much earlier than 1789; it should've been, anyway - is that even if justifications for the sole legitimacy of the (liberal) democratic regime are still articulated, that underlying proposition is more presuppositional than propositional - and the justifications are really more like ritual repetitions of a creed.
But maybe it is the right word -- Pascal's account of belief has been described as "kneel, move your lips as if to pray, and you believe." That sense of 'belief', where it's not a doxastic state that produces our commitments and actions, but a subjective reflection of the habits and rituals that we find ourselves living -- that sense fits in the context.
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )individual interests are viewed as part of the problem. The whole enlightenment and any philosophy of individualism is called into question. The crusaders seem to think we should re-dedicate the entire polity towards God's work, while the run of the mil monarchists and royalists think that we should just recognize that our betters know better and the common man shouldn't be involved in matters of state.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )I think that Sebastian saw the face of God.
Oh, and by the way - it's not just in Africa, or among "minorities," that liberal democracy will never work.
In the long run.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )liberal democracy sure seems pretty lively right now, and the momentum of the last several hundred years shows that the idea of a hereditary elite ruling class is gone forever. The doom and gloom crowd has pretty meager pickings absent some sort of catastrophe that would wipe out any large scale civilization. There's no guarantees of anything, but I'm afraid the christian crusaders have less and less to comfort themselves with nowadays.
I suppose we could all go back to our mud huts and let our betters decide what's best for us, but I doubt very much that's going to happen or that it would be a good thing. Opinions on that differ, I gather.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )so...
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec11241/002.htm
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| parent )...in a local nonprofit I helped found. Man, seriously. I never had so much empathy for Andrew Jackson. This stuff is hard.
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| parent )I'm in the middle of watching I, Claudius with my daughter. I assure you succession planning now is nowhere near what it was in a hereditary aristocracy.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )And all those fine parades and palaces and whatnot.
And the Brrrritish Navy! Rum, bum and the lash. And a rousing chorus of Kipling's Recessional:
God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line--
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
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| parent )There's a figure of speech for it.
Edit: Thanks for the Steve Sailer link. As far as I get it, if racial characteristics define behaviour, then all of German extraction must be conditioned to genocide.
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| parent )as far as I can tell, it's all "Minorities are intellectually inferior to whites, and the fact that whites designed and evaluated the tests has nothing to do with it."
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )on the planet.
Thats nit-picking, naturally. Non-whites do form an extensive category.
And what is white, exactly? Are modern Greeks white? Bernard Guererro?
We need a Gobineau, here.
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| parent ).
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent ).
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )Are we white in this part of the world?
There's a theory that we have an ancestral relation to those of German extraction - apparently that's why there's a decided preference for fair-skinned brides in our local matrimonial columns. This would probably horrify Mr Sailer.
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| parent ).
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Tinge of yellow.
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| parent )while we joke about it, an awful lot of people take tripe like this seriously.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )It's like the teabaggery; they feel it in themselves, but they bristle when others try to create rulesets from outside.
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| parent )...conversation.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )it is bound to be, sir.
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| parent )Dear, dear me.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )-
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| parent )...for correcting my brackets from square to angle (if I understand you correctly).
I try to keep up. I really do.
Unfortunately, I find the rest of your post more than a little puzzling.
I *thought* that I was *attacking* the very notion of "exporting democracy" - but you seem to think that I was *defending* it!
How odd.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )it used the "<>" brackets. I was just saying that if you use "Full HTML" then you can't have the bbcode brackets "[]" anywhere else in the post, because they won't get interpreted correctly. Fix one thing, break another ...
I didn't mention democracy or exporting anywhere, just the nature of war and atrocity. But to call Liberia anything related to exporting democracy is willful blindness of the situation there since the early 1800s. Slave and ex-slave dumping ground and another pointless Cold War proxy war come much closer to the mark.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Neither was the race/draft riots of New York during the Civil War...Zuit Suit Riots...systematic destruction of Indian tribes...Shays Rebellion...the burning down of DC...
No video tape of it = things were peachy
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| parent )Not even in the ball-park of what's going on, day-in, day-out, in post-colonial Africa.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I would put that in the same ball park.
For the others I agree.
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| parent )but I don't understand what your point is, precisely.
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| parent )...is that you should watch the video.
All of it.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Of any type. Liberia is a terrible place where terrible things happened. It wasn't twenty years ago, but then it started to slip.
Of course, the politicians who caused that descent into lawlessness, anarchy, and the promotion of sociopaths into leadership positions were all staunchly PC, committed to the rule of law even for unsympathetic criminals, and pro-gay-rights. You know, standard liberals. There is absolutely no possibility that this is a cautionary tale of horrors associated with dismantling a legal regime or extolling sociopathy and tribal allegances at the expense of the nation's overall interests.
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| parent )So why did the First Liberian Civil War happen?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I misremembered and thought it was early 90s.
Heh, a story from the 80s:
That sounds, of course, entirely unfamiliar within the context of US politics.
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| parent )Samuel Doe was Liberia's version of a Republican.
Whatever.
Would it kill you just to watch the f***ing documentary?
In return, I promise to watch an hour of internet video of your choice.
I defy you to come up with anything even half as compelling.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )My family was there when Doe's coup took place and lived there from 76-82. Doe simply acted first in a political environment where the majority indigenous population finally took action against being from most economic and political power by a minority of "Americo-Liberians" of ex-slave returnees.
Doe then took the familiar path of African revolutions of granting his own tribe near exclusive access to the economic and polictical reigns of power. Which, of course, led to further disenfranchisement of other tribes and the resulting un-rest and counter-coup of the next decade.
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| parent )Hoocoodanode?
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| parent )nt
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| parent )There are a lot of fairly standard liberal narratives at play in that set of events.
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| parent )...of expressing myself unclearly.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )...between the artist and the audience, nu?
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| parent )You take yourself for an "artist."
The answer to your question is, of course, NO.
Still wish you might find a few moments to check out that video.
But - whatever.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )A lot of conservatives seem to think they have ownership over my time, and are really startled when I disagree. Weird, but there it is.
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| parent )Ronald Reagan backed Samuel Doe, and feted him in the White House.
And my favorite, Reagan on Ríos Montt:
I've seen the villages Ríos Montt shelled with direct-fire howitzers.
Let's put it this way, beyond any doubt, the Republicans have backed the most monstrous dictators of the age.
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| parent )or does that picture look like Hussein was photoshopped in?
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| parent )It is a matter of record that the Reagan Administration had no problem with giving Saddam's Iraq aid to keep them killing the heck out of the insane Iranian regime--any childish Photoshopping to reinforce that point is more or less unimportant. My sole regret is that the two regimes failed to exterminate each other into harmlessness with the least possible impact on the innocents in both countries.
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| parent )"Somoza may be a S.O.B.--but he's *our* S.O.B."
President Jimmuh toasts the Shah of Iran.
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| parent )Realpolitik has a long and inglorious history in this country. Maybe we ought to give it a rest.
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| parent )Bill Clinton, for example.
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| parent )That's awesome! What color is the sky?
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| parent ).
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| parent )Doe isn't a Republican. Doe is what Republicans cause. Conservatism is a parasitic philosophy; it requires a functioning host to function. Nobody does well under Doe.
It's just that there's a set of folks who are going to enable men like Doe to come to power and a set of folks who are going to make it much harder for men like Doe to come to power. And it's not particularly difficult to tell which is which.
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| parent )BTW - do you think that our Republicans also caused Charles Taylor & Prince Johnson - the guy who cut up Samuel Doe & ate bits of him?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )in full possession of facts, and access to news were persuaded to believe that Mr Saddam Hussein, in league with al Qaeda, was complicit in the the bombing of the World Trade Center.
Not all, of course. But a significant number. Which, paradoxically, casts doubt on the thesis that education necessarily eliminates irrationality.
And humans can be irrationally cruel. This is news?
Have we forgotten Frau Ilse Koch? Einsatzkommando Karl Jaeger?
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| parent ).
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| parent )...be-kaaa...
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I'll tell you why after (if) you reply!
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| parent )My own spelling.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )it means, almost exactly, "waffle".
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| parent )...and we just kept feeding them chicken pellets.
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| parent )I didn't say that our Republicans caused Doe, so I don't understand how your question makes any sense. No hablo wingnut.
Again, having a sensible ideology is a suspect trait in any sense -- it might get in the way of tribal loyalty.
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| parent )...even though it's working perfectly fine over at WWWW...
OK, here's the web address:
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia
This really is must-see stuff.
*****
Update:
Ah - there it is. Thanks to the powers that be.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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