I enjoyed this. Thank you Neo. My favorites were about truth and honesty. But a couple made me laugh too.
How delightful to listen to good old Mark Twain while I am drinking my first cup of coffee. There are so many great quotes he shares and remember his great and perhaps best American novel was ‘Huckleberry Finn’ which has been banned in a lot of schools.
“…The recent trial balloon launched by the inner party regarding a wealth tax is a good example of how the lying game works. The idea being floated is that billionaires will be subjected to a new tax that applies to their unrealized capital gains. They will pay a tax based on the potential profit from the sale of certain assets. Presumably, this will apply only to equities, the market value of which can be determined by the current trading price at the time the tax is assessed.
Right away, you see that everything about this is a lie. For starters, how does one determine if you are a billionaire? It is easy when it comes to oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, but further down the list it gets less clear. Calculating net worth is not as straight forward at this level as most assume. Of course, avoiding the tax will spawn an industry to help the rich hide their assets from this tax. Since that exists in other areas, this tax is a boon to the financial schemers who currently serve the rich.
Then you have the impracticality of the idea. When would the tax be levied, and would it be levied on the same asset every year? If you buy a stock in 2021 and it goes up ten percent, you get taxed on the ten percent. If it goes up again in 2022, do you pay a tax on it again or just the increase in 2022? What happens when you pay the tax on unrealized gains that disappear the day after you paid the tax? What about assets held in family trusts? Do they get taxed as well?
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Of course, this will never become law. It is just a sop to the mouth breathers on the far left who operate on massive corporate platforms while pretending to be anti-capitalists and socialists. It also allows the zombies in Conservative Inc. to come out from under their beds and do their libertarian dance. They get to put on the thin tie, throw on the Flock of Seagulls cassette and carry on like it is 1985. It is party night at the museum where everyone gets to pretend the outside world does not exist.
Everything about this drama is a lie, because it is just a drama. It is a story being told to arouse the passions of the crowd so they stop thinking about things that should matter to them, like the fact that gasoline prices have doubled, or their government lied about the Covid pandemic for two years. This is the nature of democratic politics. The winners are just the best liars. The losers never lose anything. They just have to come up with better lies so they can get another crack at the lying game.
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It may be that a hidden strength of the marketplace is that because no one can trust anyone and there is no neutral arbiter to enforce honestly, everyone has to be on their game all the time. Therefore, it boils off those who are less clever and less able to live by their own wits. The cost to the collective strength that comes from the lack of trust is less than the benefit that comes from stronger individual members. Deracinated clever liars are better than united trusting morons.
That may be why democracy is such a violent form of government. The Greeks were always fighting with one another and then with the Persians. America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war. Perhaps the hidden cost of that hidden strength of the market it is needs an enemy to bind the parts together. The reason liberal democracy looks a lot like fascism is the only way to bind the sticks together is with enemies, real and imagined.”
Growing up in high school, Twain was my absolute favorite. Of course now he is cancelled. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer have been removed from school libraries for quite awhile now.
Weekly Covid update after weekend data has come in. I’m still quite frustrated by the media and governments. I see reports of “covid rapidly spreading” even from conservative outlets. It’s a fabrication. Again, I wish we could post graphics.
National two week rolling average of new cases/day now at -20k; yesterday had a one day whopping drop of -115k. Serious cases now down to about 2600 equivalent to March of 2020. For comparison, serious cases reached a peak of 27000 in January of this year from the alpha. Peak serious cases from the delta was 15000 5 weeks ago. Overall time line for cases/day was 3 waves of the alpha the first 2 being about 26000 cases at day 55 and day 150; day zero for me at Feb 25, 2020. Largest alpha wave reached a peak of 86k/day at the end of January 2021. Delta peaked at 126k/day 55 days ago. For those interested in statistics, the large alpha peak had a FWHM of 77 days; the delta FWHM was 40 days. Compare cases and serious cases for the alpha and delta and it’s easy to see the alpha produced more serious cases, while the delta produced many more cases but fewer serious cases, ie delta more contagious but less virulent.
Of the 5 states I track, GA, FL, and NC all continue downward in both cases and deaths. NH and CO both showing opposite trends. NH’s cases are low in terms of national impact at about 300/day; CO at about 2k/day. What is interesting for both states is that both show almost exact same trend: about 40 days ago started a down trend that then reversed 10 days later and has been climbing since.
If unrealized cap gain tax applied to ‘billionaires’ was only applied to publicly-traded companies, because of easy valuation measurement, then there would be a major exit by ‘billionaires’ (however defined) into assets which are *not* publicly-traded & easily valued, hence driving down stock prices & maybe bond prices too. It would result in a search for privately-traded companies by those ‘billionaires’ and drive up the prices of these. (Good for those of us who have some private-company investments, at least temporarily) But once Congress figured out what is happening, they would impose the unrealized CG tax on those investments, too, resulting in the kind of problems that I outlined above.
At a young age I became rather obsessed with Sam Clemens and read a great deal by him and about him. A really incredible man and life. Printing press operator at the age of 12(?), riverboat pilot, gold prospector, journalist… Grew up in the midwest, spent his mid to late adulthood in the west then spent his later years in the east. America personified. There is so much tragedy in his autobiography, yet his life was not extraordinary in that regard. Hardship and tragedy were common things in America in the 1800s. Still are in a lot of the world.
Hats off to Shakespeare and Austen, Chaucer and Dickens, but, “All right then, I’ll go to hell!” just may be the greatest sentence ever written in English lit.
zaphod,
Your point yesterday(?) about wantonly ambitious people (I forget your precise term, but I use “Type A’s” as shorthand), along with your excerpt at 10:32am on this thread are real, valid issues concerning the American system of government, especially at this moment in time.
When they were fairly young I told each of my children one of the most difficult things they would have to learn to deal with, growing up in America, is that they are being marketed to all day, everyday, in everything; what toys and games they play with, what clothes they wear, what they eat, religion, health, education… I would explain that freedom and free choice are great things if one takes on the immense work and responsibility that are required to master freedom, but the downside of a truly free society is constant messaging from people who will want their money, time, or both.
Now that our most powerful corporations; Alphabet, Facebook, Coca-Cola, the television networks, movie companies… are all colluding with the Democrat Party, the messaging has grown, exponentially, to a tsunami that is in real danger of destroying us all.
As geoffb pointed out yesterday(?), now that America lacks an accepted, moral code, the Type A’s are running rampant amidst the chaos.
As zman wrote:
It may be that a hidden strength of the marketplace is that because no one can trust anyone and there is no neutral arbiter to enforce honestly, everyone has to be on their game all the time. Therefore, it boils off those who are less clever and less able to live by their own wits.
physicsguy @ 10:42am,
A guest post from you regarding COVID statistics and your research since the pandemic began, with graphs, would be a great read!
“…America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war…”
Um, er…are we absolutely certain about this?
(I mean, it SOUNDS really catchy…but is it actually true? Hey, maybe it sounds so good it doesn’t really HAVE TO be true!!)
Back to the real world…
“The Lion Whisperer” https://youtu.be/-wK5mHXlO8o
Ozzie has NOTHING on this guy…well, except maybe more colorful language…
(And no, it’s not Jordan Peterson’s twin brother…)
That may be why democracy is such a violent form of government.
I’ve never figured out whether you’ve concluded you can just utter nonsense and get away with it by feigning breezy self-confidence, or if you’ve persuaded yourself you are knowledgeable and insightful, or if you just recycle some third party BS artist.
Art Deco:
I think that strange comment about democracies being so violent was a quote from this person “zman” who seems to be a real favorite of Zaphod’s. So in this case it’s “just recycle some third party BS artist.”
It’s an especially odd, nonsensical, and ignorant quote, though. Perhaps zman left out the rest of it, which would be “democracy is such a violent form of government except for all the others that have been tried” (see this).
Thank you physicsguy for helping to keep it real.
Neo, four of the most misquoted men in History are Sir Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Abraham Lincoln. The fact that they are misquoted so often is in a way a tribute to their wit and intelligence. In fact the International Churchill Society has a page dedicated to “False Quotes Attributed to Churchill”. One quote attributed to Churchill about “a lie going half way around the world before truth gets its pants (or shoes) on” actually belongs to Twain.
Well… You are right it wasn’t Churchill, but it also wasn’t Twain. Or Clemens!
I noticed that quote when I watched the clip and almost wrote something about it not being Twain, but decided against it since it’s such a great quote, and it sounds “Twain’ian,” but it is not one of Twain’s.
}}} If you buy a stock in 2021 and it goes up ten percent, you get taxed on the ten percent. If it goes up again in 2022, do you pay a tax on it again or just the increase in 2022? What happens when you pay the tax on unrealized gains that disappear the day after you paid the tax? What about assets held in family trusts? Do they get taxed as well?
…
Of course, this will never become law.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. “Give us moar moar moar milk, you fat rich cow”!!
And… don’t bet on that for a moment.
They will happily kill the cow by overmilking it.
Because no one is going to blame THEM when the house of cards comes falling down.
RTF–
Twain did make a comment about lies, but his remark compares lies with cats: “One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”– from Pudd’nhead Wilson.
One of Twain’s better-known comments about Felis catus: “Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”– from his 1894 notebook.
Twain described one of his favorite cats– which he named Sour Mash– in his Autobiography: “[Sour Mash] was just that independent of criticism, and I think it was her supreme grace. In her industries she was remarkable. She was always busy. If she wasn’t exterminating grasshoppers she was exterminating snakes — for no snake had any terrors for her. . . . She was untiring in her energies. Every waking moment was precious to her; in it she would find something useful to do — and if she ran out of material and couldn’t find anything else to do she would have kittens. She always kept us supplied, and her families were of choice quality. She herself was a three-colored tortoise-shell, but she had no prejudices of breed, creed, or caste. She furnished us all kinds, all colors, with that impartiality which was so fine a part of her make. She allowed no dogs on the premises except those that belonged there. Visitors who brought their dogs along always had an opportunity to regret it. She hadn’t two plans for receiving a dog guest, but only one. She didn’t wait for the formality of an introduction to any dog, but promptly jumped on his back and rode him all over the farm. By my help she would send out cards, next day, and invite that dog to a garden party, but she never got an acceptance. The dog that had enjoyed her hospitalities once was willing to stand pat.”
Regarding the zaphod, zman quote about democracies and violence…
I certainly don’t mean to speak for zaphod, he obviously doesn’t need the help (he’s likely second only to me when it comes to lengthy, meandering, often confusing defenses of absurd opinions). But since most folks are currently sleeping on his side of the globe, I’ll take a stab at it.
Regarding the statement about Democracies in general and “the Greeks,” that doesn’t seem worth agreement nor disagreement. War was a way of life for most all nations and empires at least through the early 20th century and it would be hard to attribute more or less of it to any particular system of government. Even pacifist societies like Tibet have to contend with it. As Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” I’ve heard it said, and I think it’s a truism, that no two democracies have gone to war against one another in the modern era. But that gets into splitting hairs over what a democracy is. North Korea has elections. Excuse me, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has elections.
I don’t see much point in quibbling with that first part. Seems sort-of arbitrary.
But the second part, “America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war.” If you change your perspective to that of a citizen on any other point on the globe what would it look like to you?
Kids in Germany grow up seeing U.S. tanks drive down their roads. People in France watch nearly nightly race riots or racial conflict in the U.S. In England and Wales there were 671 homicides in 2019, 32 killed in shootings. 786 in Chicago alone in the past 12 months. 23 shootings there just last weekend. You know those images of people wantonly and freely looting stores in San Francisco with no, legal repercussions? They show those same images on international television.
We have an entire, huge, industry pumping out a musical genre called, “Gangster Rap” to the world’s discotheques. Hollywood makes movies with body counts that would make Pol Pot blush. Western films, gangster films, war films, hell, even our sci-fi is typically about war and gore.
One out of every 100 adult Americans is incarcerated. About 2.5 million, including juvenille detention. Our closest competition is Russia, at about 60% our rate. Norway, Denmark, Germany… about 1/10th our rate.
We often start our major sporting events; Superbowl, World Series, with military fighter jet flyovers.
And I don’t even want to get started in what our military and CIA have done internationally. What nation’s armaments have caused more death since 1945? What’s the only country to use nuclear weapons in an act of aggression? How many countries have witnessed American “boots on the ground” in the past 50 years? Even if it’s humanitarian missions, U.S. kids don’t grow up seeing armed, foreign soldiers dressed in camo in their neighborhoods.
Look, I like living here and I feel very safe where I am currently typing this, and I know a lot of the arguments behind a lot of the foreign intervention, including selling expensive weapons to other nations, but to not understand that America appears hyper violent and warlike to the rest of the world is a very parochial perspective.
RTF–
As you note, the United States has been perceived as a violent society because of its fascination with gangsta culture as well as war in the military sense. Just one example: there is an hour-long documentary about the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the “Butcher of Prague,” that shows clips of the Nazi procession bearing Heydrich’s coffin to the Prague train station for the final journey to Berlin. The voiceover at 35:54 notes that “The British press called the occasion a gangster funeral in the pompous Chicago style.” Many educated Brits were genuinely disturbed by American gangster movies of the 1930s and thought they were bound to have a bad effect on British society as well as on the English language.
While I wouldn’t recommend watching the Heydrich documentary just before bedtime, it is well done (it received a certificate of merit at an international film festival), and you can watch it here:
Physicsguy. Do you have the “infection fatality rates” by age group. I think they are all that matter, cases are just to get people excited and aren’t particularly accurate.
Excuse me, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has elections.
It doesn’t.
Kids in Germany grow up seeing U.S. tanks drive down their roads.
The tanks aren’t shooting at anyone. Last I checked, there were 35,000 American troops in Germany, or enough to occupy the Ruhr complex provided they were deployed as an occupation force; 90% of Germany’s population lives elsewhere, so I tend to doubt the cavalry component of our forces is all that obtrusive in Germany.
People in France watch nearly nightly race riots or racial conflict in the U.S.
No they don’t. Race riots were exceedingly infrequent between 1971 and 2020.
In England and Wales there were 671 homicides in 2019, 32 killed in shootings. 786 in Chicago alone in the past 12 months. 23 shootings there just last weekend. You know those images of people wantonly and freely looting stores in San Francisco with no, legal repercussions? They show those same images on international television.
The homicide rate in the United States as late as 2019 was about 5 per 100,000. It is lower in western Europe (where it is around 1.2 per 100,000), somewhat lower in eastern Europe (where it varies between 1 and 5 per 100,000), but (until quite recently) higher in Russia. In general, the United States has higher rates of violent crime (2x to 4x west European rates) but much lower rates of burglary and auto theft. The thing is, the United States is quite tranquil compared to tropical and southern Africa or compared to Latin America or compared to the Caribbean. Your TV watching Frogs give any thought to that?
We have an entire, huge, industry pumping out a musical genre called, “Gangster Rap” to the world’s discotheques. Hollywood makes movies with body counts that would make Pol Pot blush. Western films, gangster films, war films, hell, even our sci-fi is typically about war and gore.
There’s a market for action films in the Far East, ergo ” America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war. ” Can you keep track of your argument, please? As for music, in this country, the sum of R & B and Rap make up about 22% of the music sales in this country, with ‘gangsta rap’ a fraction of that. And do you fancy they’re not producing rap in Europe?
One out of every 100 adult Americans is incarcerated. About 2.5 million, including juvenille detention. Our closest competition is Russia, at about 60% our rate. Norway, Denmark, Germany… about 1/10th our rate.
So what?
We often start our major sporting events; Superbowl, World Series, with military fighter jet flyovers.
Again, so what?
And I don’t even want to get started in what our military and CIA have done internationally.
Don’t get into it because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
What’s the only country to use nuclear weapons in an act of aggression?
There is no such country. They were used to put an end to a war Japan wanted to wage and did over a period of 14 years wage, first with China and then with France, the Netherlands, Britain &c., and the US.
How many countries have witnessed American “boots on the ground” in the past 50 years? Even if it’s humanitarian missions, U.S. kids don’t grow up seeing armed, foreign soldiers dressed in camo in their neighborhoods.
No we don’t, because they’re not needed for any particular purpose.
I don’t think Dominican youths grown old have been traumatized because American troops and OAS troops were in Santo Domingo for six months in 1965. Or Panamanian youths because American troops were there for a period measured in weeks during 1989 and 1990. In fact, only four places have seen American combat troops for periods any longer than that: Korea, VietNam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Four occasions over a period of 76 years. If you wish to assess those situations, ask what the state of affairs might have been without those American troops.
Art Deco,
Have you spent any time outside of the U.S.?
I know you are not this dense, nor obtuse. You clearly understand my point (and I believe zaphod’s and zman’s) is one of perspective, not facts. How does one perceive things looking at the U.S. from the outside?
I can personally attest that many Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Afghanis, Iraqis, etc. get a particular image of Americans from dealing with American military deployed on their soil. Whether the tanks were firing or not, would it get your attention if you saw a Chinese tank lumbering down your street?
When’s the last time you saw a film produced in France that featured insanely muscled men, jacked up on steroids, firing machine guns indiscriminately? And all that pop music out of South Korea about selling drugs, murderin’ thugs and bangin’ ho’s.
C’mon, you’re better than this.
Art Deco,
Elections in North Korea are held every four-to-five years for the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), the country’s national legislature, and every four years for Local People’s Assemblies.
Art Deco,
I can also promise you that many, many foreigners have the notion that racial unrest/riots is/are common in the U.S. Any foreigner I have asked always estimates a percentage non-white population in the U.S. at least double of the actual figure. “If it bleeds it leads.” International news about the U.S. often centers on racial difficulties. You may have noticed some of our politicians doing the same things.
Art Deco,
Your own stats list the U.S. homicide rate as at least 4 times that of other, 1st world nations, so you compare us with 3rd world nations to make things look better. Don’t you think folks in other 1st world nations notice the same thing?
Do you want to vacation in a land with 4 times the homicide rate of the one you live in?
“There’s a market for action films in the Far East?!”
That’s your excuse for why our popular entertainment is so often centered on violence? Was it the Far Eastern market that gave us Mario Puzo’s, “Godfather?” “Breaking Bad?” “The Sopranos?” “Terminator?” “Bonnie and Clyde?” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?” “Scarface?”
I know you love to be contrary, but these arguments can’t even make sense to you, can they?
… and your comeback for incarceration rates is, “So what?!”
If I told you there was a country with ten times the incarceration rate of the U.S. would you perceive it is more violent and dangerous than the U.S.? Of course you would, as do the people living in nations with 1/10th our rate.
I’ve watched U.S. sporting events in foreign countries. I assure you, many foreigners think the fighter jet flyovers are odd. Looks a lot like a display of military might. Because that’s what it is. A display of military might.
Rufus: “And I don’t even want to get started in what our military and CIA have done internationally.”
Art Deco: “Don’t get into it because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
1798-1800 France Undeclared U.S. naval war against France, U.S. Marines land in Puerto Plata
1801-1805 Tripoli War with Tripoli (Libya), called “First Barbary War”
1806 Spanish Mexico U.S. military force enter Spanish territory in headwaters of the Rio Grande
1806-1810 Spanish and French in Caribbean U.S. naval vessels attack French and Spanish shipping in the Caribbean
1810 Spanish West Florida U.S. troops invade and seize Western Florida, a Spanish possession
1812 Spanish East Florida U.S. troops seize Amelia Island and adjacent territories
1812 Britain War of 1812, includes U.S. naval and land operations
1813 Marquesas Island U.S. forces seize Nukahiva and establish first U.S. naval base in the Pacific
1814 Spanish (East Florida) U.S. troops seize Pensacola in Spanish East Florida
1814-1825 French, British and Spanish in Caribbean U.S. naval squadron engages French, British and Spanish shipping in the Caribbean
1815 Algiers and Tripoli U.S. naval fleet under Captain Stephen Decatur wages “Second Barbary War” in North Africa
1816-1819 Spanish East Florida U.S. troops attack and seize Nicholls’ Fort, Amelia Island and other strategic locations. Spain eventually cedes East Florida to the United States
1822-1825 Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico U.S. Marines land in numerous cities in the Spanish island of Cuba and also in Spanish Puerto Rico
1827 Greece U.S. Marines invade the Greek islands of Argentiere, Miconi and Andross
1831 Falkland/Malvinas Islands U.S. naval squadrons aggress the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic
1832 Sumatra, Dutch East Indies U.S. naval squadrons attack Qallah Battoo
1833 Argentina U.S. forces land in Buenos Aires and engage local combatants
1835-1836 Peru U.S. troops dispatched twice for counter-insurgency operations
1836 Mexico U.S. troops assist Texas war for independence
1837 Canada U.S. naval incident on the Canadian border leads to mobilization of a large force to invade Canada. War is narrowly averted
1838 Sumatra, Dutch East Indies U.S. naval forces sent to Sumatra for punitive expedition
1840-1841 Fiji U.S. naval forces deployed, U.S. Marines land
1841 Samoa U.S. naval forces deployed, U.S. Marines land
1842 Mexico U.S. naval forces temporarily seize cities of Monterey and San Diego
1843 China U.S. Marines land in Canton
1843 Ivory Coast U.S. Marines land
1846-1848 Mexico Full-scale war. Mexico cedes half of its territory to the U.S. by the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo
1849 Ottoman Empire (Turkey) U.S. naval force dispatched to Smyrna
1852-1853 Argentina U.S. Marines land in Buenos Aires
1854 Nicaragua U.S. Navy bombards and largely destroys city of San Juan del Norte. U.S. Marines land and set fire to the city
1854 Japan Commodore Perry and his fleet deploy at Yokohama
1855 Uruguay U.S. Marines land in Montevideo
1856 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. Marines land for counter-insurgency campaign
1856 China U.S. Marines deployed in Canton
1856 Hawaii U.S. naval forces seize small islands of Jarvis, Baker and Howland in the Hawaiian Islands
1857 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land
1858 Uruguay U.S. Marines land in Montevideo
1858 Fiji U.S. Marines land
1859 Paraguay Large U.S. naval force deployed
1859 China U.S. troops enter Shanghai
1859 Mexico U.S. military force enters northern area
1860 Portuguese West Africa U.S. troops land at Kissembo
1860 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. troops and naval forces deployed
1863 Japan U.S. troops land at Shimonoseki
1864 Japan U.S. troops landed in Yedo
1865 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. Marines landed
1866 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. troops invade and seize Matamoros, later withdraw
1866 China U.S. Marines land in Newchwang
1867 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land in Managua and Leon in Nicaragua
1867 Formosa Island (Taiwan) U.S. Marines land
1867 Midway Island U.S. naval forces seize this island in the Hawaiian Archipelago for a naval base
1868 Japan U.S. naval forces deployed at Osaka, Hiogo, Nagasaki, Yokohama and Negata
1868 Uruguay U.S. Marines land at Montevideo
1870 Colombia U.S. Marines land
1871 Korea U.S. forces land
1873 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. Marines land
1874 Hawaii U.S. sailors and marines land
1876 Mexico U.S. Army occupies Matamoros
1882 British Egypt U.S. troops land
1885 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. troops land in Colon and Panama City
1885 Samoa U.S. naval force deployed
1887 Hawaii U.S. Navy gains right to build permanent naval base at Pearl Harbor
1888 Haiti U.S. troops land
1888 Samoa U.S. Marines land
1889 Samoa Clash with German naval forces
1890 Argentina U.S. sailors land in Buenos Aires
1891 Chile U.S. sailors land in the major port city of Valparaiso
1891 Haiti U.S. Marines land on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island
1893 Hawaii U.S. Marines and other naval forces land and overthrow the monarchy.
1894 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land at Bluefields on the eastern coast
1894-1895 China U.S. Marines are stationed at Tientsin and Beijing. A U.S. naval ship takes up position at Newchwang
1894-1896 Korea U.S. Marines land and remain in Seoul
1895 Colombia U.S. Marines are sent to the town Bocas del Toro
1896 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land in the port of Corinto
1898 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land at the port city of San Juan del Sur
1898 Guam U.S. naval forces seize Guam Island from Spain and the U.S. holds the island permanently
1898-1902 Cuba U.S. naval and land forces seize Cuba from Spain
1898 Puerto Rico U.S. naval and land forces seize Puerto Rico from Spain and the U.S. holds the island permanently
1898 Philippines U.S. naval forces defeat the Spanish fleet and the U.S. takes control of the country
1899 Philippines U.S. military units are reinforced for extensive counter-insurgency operations
1899 Samoa U.S. naval forces land
1899 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land at the port city of Bluefields
1900 China U.S. forces intervene in several cities
1901 Colombia/Panama U.S. Marines land
1902 Colombia/Panama U.S. forces land in Bocas de Toro
1903 Colombia/Panama With U.S. backing, a group in northern Colombia declares independence as the state of Panama, secure protectorate and canal
1903 Guam U.S. Navy begins development in Apra Harbor of a permanent base installation
1903 Honduras U.S. Marines go ashore at Puerto Cortez
1903 Dominican Republic U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo
1904-1905 Korea U.S. Marines land and stay in Seoul
1906-1909 Cuba U.S. Marines land. The U.S. builds a major U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay
1907 Nicaragua U.S. troops seize major centers
1907 Honduras U.S. Marines land and take up garrison in cities of Trujillo, Ceiba, Puerto Cortez, San Pedro, Laguna and Choloma
1908 Panama U.S. Marines land and carry out operations
1910 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto
1911 Honduras U.S. Marines intervene
1911-1941 China The U.S. builds up its military presence in the country to a force of 5000 troops and a fleet of 44 vessels patrolling China’s coast and rivers
1912 Cuba U.S. sends army troops into combat in Havana
1912 Panama U.S. Army troops intervene
1912 Honduras U.S. Marines land
1912-1933 Nicaragua U.S. Marines intervene. A 20-year occupation of the country follows
1913 Mexico U.S. Marines land at Ciaris Estero
1914 Dominican Republic U.S. naval forces engage in battles in the city of Santo Domingo
1914 Mexico U.S. forces seize and occupy Mexico’s major port city of Veracrus from April through November
1915-1916 Mexico An expeditionary force of the U.S. Army under Gen. John J. Pershing crosses the Texas border and penetrates several hundred miles into Mexican territory. Eventually reinforced to over 11,000 officers and men
1914-1934 Haiti U.S. troops land, aerial bombardment leading to a 19-year U.S. military occupation
1916-1924 Dominican Republic U.S. military intervention leading to 8-year occupation
1917-1933 Cuba Landing of U.S. naval forces. Beginning of a 15-year occupation
1918-1920 Panama U.S. troops intervene, remain on “police duty” for over 2 years
1918-1922 Russia U.S. naval forces and army troops fight battles in several areas of the country during a five- year period
1919 Yugoslavia U.S. Marines intervene in Dalmatia
1919 Honduras U.S. Marines land
1920 Guatemala U.S. troops intervene
1922 Turkey U.S. Marines engaged in operations in Smyrna (Izmir)
1922-1927 China U.S. naval forces and troops deployed during 5-year period
1924-1925 Honduras U.S. troops land twice in two-year period
1925 Panama U.S. Marines land and engage in operations
1927-1934 China U.S. Marines and naval forces stationed throughout the country
1932 El Salvador U.S. naval forces intervene
1933 Cuba U.S. naval forces deployed
1934 China U.S. Marines land in Foochow
1944 Japan U.S. Navy bombs and occupies Japan
1945-1949 China U.S. forces flew tens of thousands of Nationalist Chinese troops into Japanese-controlled territory and allowed them to accept the Japanese surrender
1946 Iran U.S. troops deployed in northern province of Iran
1946-1949 China Major U.S. Army presence of about 100,000 troops, fighting, training and advising local combatants
1947-1949 Greece U.S. forces wage a 3-year counterinsurgency campaign
1948 Italy Heavy CIA involvement in national elections
1948-1954 Philippines Commando operations, “secret” CIA war
1949 Syria A coup aided by the CIA overthrow an elected parliamentary government in Syria, which had delayed approving an oil pipeline requested by U.S. international business interests in that region
1950-1953 Korea Major U.S. forces engaged in war in Korean peninsula
1950-1953 China U.S. and UN forces fought communist Chinese and North Korean troops in the Korean War, which saw South Korea successfully defended from invasion
1953 Iran CIA overthrows government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh
1954 Vietnam Financial and materiel support for colonial French military operations, leads eventually to direct military involvement
1954 Guatemala CIA overthrows the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman
1955-1970s Tibet CIA arms an indigenous insurgency in order to oppose the invasion and subsequent control of Tibet by China
1958 Lebanon U.S. Marines and army units totalling 14,000 land
1958 Panama Clashes between U.S. forces in Canal Zone and local citizens
1958 Indonesia CIA sponsors a failed revolt against Indonesian President Sukarno
1959 Haiti U.S. Marines land
1959 Cuba CIA attempts to depose Cuban president Fidel Castro through the Bay of Pigs Invasion
1960-1965 Democratic Republic of Congo CIA-backed overthrow and leads to assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba
1961 Dominican Republic CIA supports the overthrow of Rafael Trujillo. After a period of instability, U.S. troops invades the Dominican Republic in Operation Power Pack
1961-1973 Vietnam Gradual introduction of U.S. military advisors and Special Forces
1961 Cuba CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion
1962 Cuba Nuclear threat and U.S. naval blockade
1962 Laos CIA-backed military coup
1963 Ecuador CIA backs military overthrow of President Jose Maria Valesco Ibarra
1964 Panama Clashes between U.S. forces in Canal Zone and local citizens
1964 Brazil CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government of Joao Goulart and Gen. Castello Branco takes power
1964-1973 Laos U.S. troops fought at the request of the governments of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War against the military of North Vietnam and against Viet Cong, Pathet Lao, and Khmer Rouge insurgents
1965-1975 Vietnam Large commitment of U.S. military forces, including air, naval and ground units numbering up to 500,000+ troops. Full-scale war, lasting for ten years
1965 Indonesia CIA-backed army coup overthrows President Sukarno and brings General Suharto to power
1965 Congo CIA backed military coup overthrows President Joseph Kasavubu and brings Joseph Mobutu to power
1965-1966 Dominican Republic 23,000 U.S. troops land
1965-1973 Laos Bombing campaign begin, lasting eight years
1966 Ghana CIA-backed military coup outs President Kwame Nkrumah
1966-1967 Guatemala Extensive counter-insurgency operation
1969-1975 Cambodia CIA supports military coup against Prince Sihanouk, bringing Lon Nol to power. Intensive bombing for seven years along border with Vietnam
1970 Oman Counter-insurgency operation, including coordination with Iranian marine invasion
1970-1973 Chile CIA-backed military coup ousts government of President Salvador Allende. Gen. AugU.S.to Pinochet comes to power
1971-1973 Laos Invasion by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces
1972-1975 Iraq CIA arms Kurdish rebels fighting the Ba’athist government of Iraq
1975 Cambodia U.S. Marines land, engage in combat with government forces
1976-1992 Angola U.S. military and CIA operations
1977 Pakistan The United States stages a coup in Pakistan, overthrowing the regime of socialist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the Pakistan Peoples Party
1980 Iran Special operations units land in Iranian desert. Helicopter malfunction leads to aborting of planned raid
1981 Libya U.S. naval jets shoot down two Libyan jets in manoeuvres over the Mediterranean
1981-1992 El Salvador CIA and Special Forces begin a long counterinsurgency campaign
1981-1990 Nicaragua CIA directs exile “Contra” operations. U.S. air units drop sea mines in harbors
1982-1984 Lebanon U.S. Marines land and U.S. naval forces fire on local combatants
1983-1984 Grenada U.S. military forces invade Grenada and oust the government
1983-1989 Honduras Large program of U.S. military assistance aimed at conflict in Nicaragua
1984 Iran Two Iranian jets shot down over the Persian Gulf
1986 Libya U.S. aircraft bomb the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including direct strikes at the official residence of President Muamar al Qadaffi in response to Libyan involvement in international terrorism
1986 Bolivia U.S. Special Forces units engage in counter-insurgency
1987-1988 Iran U.S. naval forces block Iranian shipping. Civilian airliner shot down by missile cruiser
1989 Libya U.S. naval aircraft shoot down two Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra
1989 Philippines CIA and Special Forces involved in counterinsurgency
1989-1990 Panama 27,000 U.S. troops as well as U.S. naval and air power used to overthrow government of President Manuel Noriega
1990 Liberia U.S. troops deployed
1990-1991 Iraq Major U.S. military operation, including naval blockade, air strikes; large number of troops attack Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait
1991 Haiti CIA-backed U.S. military coup ousts President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
1991 Kuwait The U.S. intervenes in Kuwait after a series of failed diplomatic negotiations
1992-1994 Somalia U.S. special operations forces intervene
1992-1994 Yugoslavia Major role in NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro
1992-1996 Iraq Control of Iraqi airspace in north and south of the country with periodic attacks on air and ground targets
1993-1995 Bosnia Active U.S. military involvement with air and ground forces
1994-1996 Haiti U.S. troops depose military rulers and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office
1995 Croatia Krajina Serb airfields attacked
1996-1997 Zaire (Congo) U.S. Marines involved in operations in eastern region of the country
1996 Iraq CIA involved in the failed 1996 coup attempt against Saddam Hussein
1997 Liberia U.S. troops deployed
1998 Sudan Air strikes destroy country’s major pharmaceutical plant
1998 Afghanistan Attack on targets in the country
1998 Iraq Four days of intensive air and missile strikes
2001 Macedonia NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels
2001 Afghanistan Air attacks and ground operations oust Taliban government and install a new regime
2002-2003 Iraq Invasion with large ground, air and U.S. naval forces ousts government of Saddam Hussein and establishes new government
2003-Present Iraq Occupation force of 150,000 U.S. troops in protracted counter-insurgency war
2004 Haiti U.S. Marines land. CIA-backed forces overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
2006-2007 Somalia U.S. launches air strikes on suspected Islamists
2011 Libya The U.S. intervenes in the Libyan Civil War by providing air power to rebel forces. CIA to carries out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition. Muammar Gaddafi ultimately gets overthrown and killed
2012-2017 Syria CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops trains and arms nearly 10,000 Syrian rebel fighters
2013-2014 Iraq U.S. intervenes into Iraq and begin airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
2020 Iran A U.S. drone strike at Baghdad airport kills Qasem Soleimani, top general and one of the most powerful men in Iran
Which brings us to our recent, 8/29 drone strike, killing 10 civilians in Kabul
Paul in Boston. I agree, however it’s the case numbers that the politicians focus on, and they are collapsing at a high rate.
Rufus T. Firefly:
To figure out what that list actually means, however, one would have to figure out the “why” of each intervention: which was aggressive and which defensive (and/or the result of a treaty or agreement to defend), which was assistance in fighting off an outside aggressor, which helped to overthrow an internal oppressor, etc.. And then one would have to compare to the record of other countries.
I’m not saying all those military endeavors were “good wars.” But I’m saying that there are all different kinds of military actions for many different reasons with many different results. And there are other nations much more peaceful and others much more warlike.
When I lived overseas, in two “third world” countries, I found that people really think the whole USA is like what they see in the movies, on TV shows, and on CNN International.
R.T. Firefly. That’s quite a list there that is designed to put the US into a bad light. For example “ 1944 Japan U.S. Navy bombs and occupies Japan”. Gee, didn’t the Japanese do something or other before that which was a bit rude to the US? Maybe you can remind me.
You list is disinformation, it provides no background on each event and is worded to make the US a villain . Are you auditioning for a job at the NYT or NPR?
neo,
Agree 100%.
My overzealousness was strictly in reply to Art Deco’s schoolyard level challenge. I hoped the sheer weight of it would highlight the immaturity of his “Sez you” debate style. If he disagrees, let him pick each entry apart.
You clearly understand my point (and I believe zaphod’s and zman’s) is one of perspective, not facts. How does one perceive things looking at the U.S. from the outside?
That Rufus focuses on impressions rather than fact is odd, since my recollection of the Zman quote was a factual assertion that America is a hyper-violent democracy.
That NYC and Hollywood are giant media hubs that disseminate poison to much of the world is largely true but not that meaningful to me.
Here it is: That may be why democracy is such a violent form of government. The Greeks were always fighting with one another and then with the Persians. America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war. Perhaps the hidden cost of that hidden strength of the market it is needs an enemy to bind the parts together.
Statement of fact, I’d say. I find the last statement the most interesting and slightly less false. Even there, my impression is that all large societies gain cohesion from a common enemy. But I’m not sure any nations pushed the bogeyman strategy more than the Soviets, the PRC, and the DPRK. All the relevant nations did in WWII.
Paul in Boston,
I’m a huge fan of the U.S. and apple pie. The list was in response to Art Deco’s petty critique of a comment I made.
Sorry if it offends anyone. That was not the intent at all. It was intended to show the absurdity of Art’s frequent tactic of grabbing a line from someone’s comment, copying some data (often, barely tangentially related to the topic) from an Almanac and posting it as a rebuke.
TommyJay,
I would not refer to America as a hyper violent democracy. I sincerely do not think it is.
However, someone making that claim can point to homicide rates, incarceration rates, military spending, weapons manufacturing industry production… statistics and compare them to other, 1st world countries. “Hyper” is a subjective term. If the average rate of inflation among 1st world countries is 0.25 percent and one country has a rate of 2.5% I wouldn’t call it hyper inflation, but it is 10 times the average. I’m not sure what an ideal homicide or incarceration rate is, but if you live in Denmark and you read that 1 out of every 100 adults in the U.S. is in prison one searches for reasons.
We export a lot of violence in our movies, television programs, music and news and that informs the opinions of many foreigners.
Rufus,
Sorry about my response being overbearing, but one thing that pushes my button is permuting an argument in mid-stream. The issue for me is not about “hyper” definitions or similar. The issue is that media based perceptions and the effectiveness of propaganda have precisely zero to do with the facts.
Yeah, I’ve seen “hyper inflation” bandied about very recently, but no. An inflation rate of 5 or 7% annual is serious stuff for the USA, but nowhere near hyper.
Also, it is important to note that any nation can have a zero incarceration rate. Just close all the prisons. Easy peasy.
How many hand grenade bombing attacks has Sweden had in the last 10 or 15 years? About 100. I know part of the answer to that one, but it’s just a semi-relevant counterpoint. I certainly don’t think Sweden is a generally violent society.
TommyJay,
Agree 100%, TommyJay.
Which brings us to our recent, 8/29 drone strike, killing 10 civilians in Kabul
I’m fascinated to know which website compiled by an obsessive compulsive you consulted. The problem is one that is manifest. It’s an assemblage of trivia involving small numbers of troops, next-to-no casualties, and without any proper annotation of any of them. You’ve also padded it — adding five separate entries for the Spanish-American War — for example; added unproven assertions (CIA-backed, Haiti, 2004), &c. It’s just a fraudulent Gish Gallop you’ve cut and pasted.
If I told you there was a country with ten times the incarceration rate of the U.S. would you perceive it is more violent and dangerous than the U.S.? Of course you would, as do the people living in nations with 1/10th our rate.
No, I would perceive it as a country which spends more on policing and incarceration because it has a different sort of population which requires different methods of social control. If I have a homicide rate of 5 per 100,000 and the country next door does as well, that’s what interests me. If they get by with fewer incarcerated, that’s gravy for them. Of course this discussion has zippo to do with thirst for empire.
I’ve watched U.S. sporting events in foreign countries. I assure you, many foreigners think the fighter jet flyovers are odd.
Again, so what? What’s odd is that you defer to them.
Elections in North Korea are held every four-to-five years for the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), the country’s national legislature, and every four years for Local People’s Assemblies.
If you wish to pretend to be an idiot, keep at it. Other people who post here are perfectly aware of what the term ‘election’ actually means.
That’s your excuse for why our popular entertainment is so often centered on violence? Was it the Far Eastern market that gave us Mario Puzo’s, “Godfather?” “Breaking Bad?” “The Sopranos?” “Terminator?” “Bonnie and Clyde?” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?” “Scarface?”
It’s not an excuse. Action films are marketed internationally. They reflect their taste as well as ours. No clue what connection this is supposed to have to social violence in the United States, much less to warfare.
Do you really think the diminutive 60 year old mother of four in my office who was a Sopranos devotee was watching it waiting for the gun battles? My sister watched The Godfather series so many times the last time I visited her she was mouthing the dialogue. Fifty-three year old woman in a hospital bed. Five of these named are crime fiction. They’re stories with characters developed, characters remote from daily life. People find that engaging.
Do you want to vacation in a land with 4 times the homicide rate of the one you live in?
No. But I have an advantage over you and over them. I know perfectly well that over half the homicides occur in slum zones that 90% of the population do not live in and never enter, areas which have no tourist accommodations and nothing to see. I’m also aware that 90% of the homicides outside of that slum zone are solved by law enforcement, because perpetrators and victims are generally people in the same social circle, more often than not the same household. There are some core city zones where engaging assets are located proximate to slums and you have to be careful; I’ve lived in such places. There are costs and benefits to schlepping around Manhattan and DC. If you don’t want the costs, visit Maine. I wouldn’t know why people vacation here except for the natural assets, and those aren’t located near slums.
I can also promise you that many, many foreigners have the notion that racial unrest/riots is/are common in the U.S. Any foreigner I have asked always estimates a percentage non-white population in the U.S. at least double of the actual figure. “If it bleeds it leads.” International news about the U.S. often centers on racial difficulties.
Personally, I don’t give a damn what they think. I don’t expect Eurotrash to be all that knowledgeable about American life. The question at hand is what actual social conditions are (and how that relates to Zaphod’s assertions, remember them?), not what Eurotrash fancy they are.
I can personally attest that many Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Afghanis, Iraqis, etc. get a particular image of Americans from dealing with American military deployed on their soil. Whether the tanks were firing or not, would it get your attention if you saw a Chinese tank lumbering down your street?
A tank would get my attention. Since China is a hostile and sinister country, I’d certainly be perturbed seeing Chinese troops. The first three countries on your list could have instructed American forces to leave at any time. See France, which withdrew from the military component of NATO more than 50 years ago. They don’t, because they see the utility of having those forces there (in much reduced numbers, I might add) because we are neither hostile nor sinister. As for the Afghans, they’re getting a good and hard lesson of what it means to not have to encounter American troops on the road. In re Iraq, 97% of our forces were withdrawn nearly 10 years ago; the one’s remaining are distributed among 12 bases: one each on the northern, eastern, and southern border, three in Baghdad, four on the road running between Baghdad and Fallujah, and two others around Buqaba. I doubt you’re going to see them if you don’t live in those specific locations.
@Neo:
Can you seriously believe that the United States of America has some God-given special dispensation entitling and mandating it to engage in sticking its nose into all those foreign adventures in Rufus’s Very Long List?
Imagine you’re back in counseling days trying to get through to someone in the Cluster B Collection of Fun Stuff that “It’s not all Other People’s fault all of the time”. Just because some Communists and Fellow Travelers during all of your life to date have been spouting that the USA is a particularly violent meddling giant doesn’t mean it isn’t objectively true.
As far as this discussion goes, I’ve nothing much to say about violence in the USA. It’s obviously nearly all genetically driven and there’s not much to be done about that. Well there is.. but I guess your dislike of Bantustans implies that you’re against fencing off Gaza and the West Bank. Because violence and race are obviously no excuse for this kind of Machiavellian realism. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) the demographics in your idyllic corner of MA are favourable to a peaceful life. Not sure if you’re aware, but the Z Man lives in Baltimore.
@Rufus:
While I’m not much of a fan of Han ethnic swamping of Tibet, it’s a convenient myth that they were cute cuddly peace-loving monkish Buddhist shamans all. Very violent place and those Lamaseries were funded by vast feudal estates governed in shall we say very old fashioned ways. You didn’t want to be late with your tithing or get caught skipping Corvée. For an idea of what a friendly joint it was, Beast, Men, and Gods by Ossendowski (White Russian who made epic land journey to escape Bolsheviks) is valuable source.
Art Deco:
China is a sinister country?
Really? It’s an authoritarian country, yes.
Does it force parents to send their children to Drag Queen Story Hour?
Is it psyching itself up to genocide roughly half the population?
Unless I’m mistaken, it’s only invaded one other country since 1949 (Korean Intervention as ally of North was hardly an invasion): Vietnam.
As far as I can tell it hasn’t done anything egregiously stupidly evil such as the US Intervention in WWI with all the terrible downstream effects in Europe and Russia in the following decades.
I haven’t seen the Chinese ruling and financial elites strip mine the social capital of their own people to get rich the way yours have.
The United States is becoming more corrupt and misgoverned every year… On average every year, China has become less corrupt and better governed since ca. 2010. A long way to go, but it’s just had its Civil War and Tammany Halls, and Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and you’re about to see the Great White Fleet. That’s an upward trajectory… and there you are on the downward pointing fingers.
It’s a country. Ruled by assholes… as all nations are. It does evil things. So does yours. Have at least the imagination to put yourself in other nations’ shoes and see things from their perspective. You can still then say ‘OK… but this is MY country and so @#$% them!’… that’s cool… The big thing is to be able to do it with clear eyes and not believing some nonsensical BS about other side being stupid or perfidious or immoral or whatever… Always Clear and Cold Eyes. You get to live longer and cultivate the garden longer that way.
I’m not a big fan of the Chinese either. However…
The Tibet Museum in Lhasa contains torture instruments with which Buddhist monks maintained social order in Tibet pretty much until the Chinese drove the monks out in the 1950s.
There was a time when I was a “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” sort of hippie and I idealized Buddhism. I still admire Buddhism in many ways, but I’m over that.
My favourite bit of Mark Twain is in Life on the Mississippi.
He describes a sunset or sunrise he saw on the river when he was a Riverboat Pilot. It’s a long and poetic description of the transcendent beauty of the scene.
Then he shows us how a River Pilot sees the same scene: navigational markers, currents, the language of eddies and whirlpools which enables him to spot hidden hazards, and the hazards for which there is no visible sign which he’s had to memorise for that stretch of the river. Basically it’s a nightmare:
I must have missed class the day we covered the mass democide in the US on the order of tens of millions as in China.
@Huxley:
Relative went off to live in Sri Lanka. Met her after about a year or so and said “So I guess you’ve figured out Buddhism is not all cuddly and calm, eh?”. “Yup.”
It has its good points. SE Asian Buddhists (and I’ll chuck in the Sinhalese for convenience) are a lot less neurotic about Death than Westerners.
Bit different in China / Japan: There Buddhism never was a serious daily life religion for most people (Japanese warrior monk sects during more violent historical interludes excepted)… it was more a way of Disposing of the Dead and ensuring no trouble from irate ancestors and other spirits. Everyday religion was more folkish.
Sure there were Zen Monasteries and ascetics and scholars… but had little influence on the guy in the marketplace or the peasant in his field.
Old Chinese popular literature is full of Buddhist Monks behaving like they just escaped from the Canterbury Tales or the Decameron. Putting the Devil Back Into Hell… that kind of story.
It’s little known but Mark Twain, like George Bernard Shaw later, fell in complete sappy love with Joan of Arc, then wrote probably his worst book about the Maid of Orleans.
I read that book because I fell sappily in love with Joan too.
@Huxley:
Yes… but how many have they had lately?
It’s today and tomorrow that kills you. Not 1960.
Chinese are over their fratricidal blood lust now and for a while to come.
How does it help you with a big White Man Target between your shoulder blades to say BBBBut Hundred Flowers… Great Leap Forward… Tiananmen?
For the rest, I guess there weren’t enough Lakota and Sioux to make the big leagues. It’s always there. It’s only human. Frankly no big deal unless you happen to be in the moment. You might as well rail against the tides. But since you don’t own all the media, why bother? 😛
@Huxley:
Hadn’t read the Joan of Arc one. But sucker for anything Perfidious Albion, so must do.
Since we’re beset about here with fanatical warlike Meddling Internationalist New Englanders… how about A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur?
Back when Disney was Disney and wasn’t about turning your Daughters into lesbians. Nothing to do with ownership and management, I’m sure.
Did he not also do one about a Handy with a Spanner Yankee dropped into the late Western Roman Empire? Someone certainly did.
Chinese are over their fratricidal blood lust now and for a while to come.
@Zaphod:
So you say. But as long as they are only killing Uighurs now, well, alright then.
BTW, I’ve fallen back into my bad chess old habits, obsessively working chess problems and revisiting chess.com. There, if one refers to another commenter and uses the @ as prefix, the name appears in bright turquoise.
Is that common in the-more-hep environs? Is that why you use the ampersand?
Re: Unidentified Flying Oddball
@Zaphod:
I have an old-school Disney sweet tooth. (The other day in Open Topic I compared versions of “The Parent Trap.”)
I’ll check a missed Disney dessert with a decent recommendation.
@Zaphod:
You might like “Stripping the Gurus,” a debunking book by a guy who got over the Eastern Trip while slaving away at the Yogananda community in Ojai (California).
You can read the whole thing there or dl the pdf. It’s arranged by guru, so you don’t have to read the whole thing, but just check the ToC and click for the dirt.
@huxley:
Candleshoe was good, too!
@huxley:
“So you say. But as long as they are only killing Uighurs now, well, alright then.”
Well it *is* alright… Unless you’re an Uighur. Better the Uighurs than you or me. I may sound flippant, but honestly we have to get a little bit less wrapped up in what Humans A do to Humans B Over There. Humans kill other Tribes. It’s what we’re programmed to do. Best kept localised and better yet ritualised so as to maximise that lovely Benthamite Utility.
All you do when you try to stop Tribe A killing Tribe B next door is a bunch of other extra people killed as well. North worth it. Go complain to Ray Kurzweil and tell him to hurry the #@$% up if you don’t like it 🙂
Yes.. the @ is a habitual thing when referring to people in chats, discussions. Would have already been used by internet old timers in blog comments before Twitter came along and made it more well-known to the masses, I guess.
Now go write the n-Queens solvers in Scheme and Haskell!
zaphod, huxley,
Although it’s not Clemens’ most poignant work, I greatly enjoyed, “A Connecticut Yankee…” I’m almost positive I did see a black and white film of it once. I have no recollection of that Disney movie.
Was Clemens’ book the first time travel novel? It predates Wells’, “Time Machine” by a few years, but it doesn’t involve an actual invention for time travel. I don’t recall Clemens getting credit for inventing the genre so I must be forgetting one or two other man out of time novels?
Also not a novel, but, in my mind, very poignant, is Clemens’, “The Innocents Abroad.” One could do worse if one wants to have an idea of what life was like for an upper, middle class American before the turn of the 20th century and what a good part of the world was like then.
Regarding old school Disney, I love the University farces; “Flubber” and “Son of” (the MacMurray originals, not the abominable remakes), “The Computer that Wore Tennis Shoes,” “The Strongest Man in the World,” “The World’s Greatest Athlete*.”
*That one almost certainly feeds into zaphod’s nostalgia for African colonialism. I haven’t seen it in decades, but I imagine there are scenes that make it as unscreenable today as, “Song of the South.”
Zaphod:
Count me as old-fashioned, but when you’re killing tens of millions of citizens, it becomes a whole ‘nother ball game.
If Bill Ayers had gotten a crack at transforming America, maybe.
According to the undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Weather Underground, Ayers ballparked the number at 25 million Americans.
Zaphod,
It may be a part of human nature to war based on extrinsic characteristics, but, like a lot of things in our nature it can be overcome.
I tend to lean towards the evolutionary theory that male humans evolved with a desire to copulate often, with multiple partners and female humans evolved with a desire to find a mate who will stick around, at least for the kid’s first few years. It may have made sense when disease, famine, tsunami, lava and predatory animals were continual threats, but mating for life is the most practical way to go in modern, 1st world cultures, so I’ve adapted and become fully domesticated. So far it seems like my wife is also onboard with the strategy.
It seems to be something many of my fellow man struggle with. Fighting evolution can be difficult. But does that mean we throw in the towel and revert to harems and eunuchs? When a man and a woman raise children together the children seem to fare better than when the man goes on walkabout.
I also believe we’re bred to eat when food is available, and want to eat the most caloric food available, because for all of humanity up until about 50 years ago 99.9999999999% of humans struggled to find enough calories to survive to adulthood. But I also know if I eat what I want, when I want, it will be detrimental to my long term survival due to the abundance of cheap, high caloric (and great tasting!) food at the local grocers’. I see a lot of my peers failing at the task of resisting those evolutionary urges. It’s difficult. Really difficult. But just because it’s difficult do we give up?
So even if you are right, and tribalism is bred into us, I don’t see how or why we would stop trying to elevate one another above the urge for genocide through reason and charity. Just like monogamy or limiting one’s food intake, it won’t work all the time, fighting nature is hard, but if one knows it is the right thing to do one must, at least, try. No?
huxley,
Along with Joan of Arc Sam Clemens became a great fan and friend of Hellen Keller (although he never became a friend of Joan of Arc). Helen and he got along famously. I’ve read several statements from contemporaries claiming Keller could be quite the b*tch, but I find it hard to believe since Clemens was a fan and he seemed to have a good radar for frauds, phonies and fops. Although he did get taken to the cleaners by several inventors claiming to have made working typewriters, so he wasn’t perfect.
@Rufus:
I’m all for self-improvement and reaching for the light. Really.
Realistically this can only be done of their own volition by a tiny fraction of the populace everywhere. The rest requires some form of coercion.
Go to the Mall.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Twain was a man of Great Enthusiasms and Strong Opinions. He considered his Joan of Arc book to be his best, which I find more than a bit weird.
Thinking about Twain now, I’d say his closest literary successor was Robert Heinlein. I’m probably not the only person to think of that. I can hear Twain in Hemingway too.
Hemingway… Time to plug The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber again! Every 15 year old boy should be made to read it.
Helen Keller was quite the Radical Progressive Bitch. How many of use learned that fact in the classroom back when? Mostly we did not… she had already been sanctified by the victors because the battle had already been won… and our classrooms were already pozzed. Just we did not know it.
Oddly I don’t recall hearing of the Joan of Arc book but I will seek it out. Sounds right up my alley, which is why it’s so odd I don’t recall hearing of it. As I wrote, I became obsessed with Twain at a very young age though, 7(?), and I read a lot of his stuff around then. I mainly remember the things I re-read later.
Also odd, I’ve never thought about similar authors until I read your comment. Hmmm… Hemingway? I don’t see it. Several authors come to mind, Melville, Irving, Hawthorne… but none have the additional component of his humor. Not an author, but I could picture Abe Lincoln writing something akin to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog…” as a crowd warm up for a stump speech.
The only author I can currently think of who wrote so accurately from the perspective of a teen as Clemens did is J.K. Rowling. I also imagine Sam Clemens and Ted Geisel could have enjoyed one another’s company, had they been contemporaries. And Jack London. I don’t know why, but I have a hunch Hemingway would annoy Clemens.
“I have a hunch Hemingway would annoy Clemens.”
Imagine sewing him into a sack with Norman Mailer. And Helen Keller.
Rufus:
The Twain sound I hear in Hemingway (and Heinlein) is the general opinionating about life on the fly that these authors IMO indulge. It would be annoying, but they (YMMV) are charming enough to be worth the indulgence.
“In the 1820s, America was a land of “becoming.” Two hundred years later, America is very largely a land of “having become.” In the 1820s, Hegel could call America a “land of desire.” Two-hundred years later, more and more think to call America a land of dread. Dread was always implicit in this land of desire, and our “higher men” have always felt the fatal world-fear when they imagined our consummation; but the sense of dread has grown and spread as work has passed into works, and as this nation has thereby passed “from maturity to old age
The dead of winter is implicit in the blooms of spring, but men in tune with the seasons stack their firewood in the fall. Here is what Spengler says about those who feel and do not feel the dread.
“Only the spiritually dead man of the autumnal cities—Hammurabi’s Babylon, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Islamic Bagdad, Paris and Berlin today—only the pure intellectual, the sophist, the sensualist, the Darwinian, loses it or is able to evade it by setting up a secretless ‘scientific worldview’ between himself and the alien”
Zaphod —
Did he not also do one about a Handy with a Spanner Yankee dropped into the late Western Roman Empire? Someone certainly did.
“Realistically this can only be done of their own volition by a tiny fraction of the populace everywhere. The rest requires some form of coercion.”
I agree it can only be done of one’s own volition. I do not agree it is only achievable by a tiny fraction of the populace.
Coercion is the opposite of volition.
@ huxley > “I’m imagining Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw discussing Joan of Arc.
It doesn’t go well.”
Understatement of the year.
I invested several years into studying The Maid of Orléans (quite some time ago), and have a great respect for her. IMO, both Twain and Shaw were projecting a lot of their own personal hobbyhorses onto the movie screen of her life.
Hemingway and Clemens would have bonded over their mutual love of cats.
Rufus T. Firefly
Thanks for the correction on the “a lie is halfway around the world… ” quote. I do recall having read that it comes from Twain but there are a lot of false attributions on the Internet.
Another false quote attributed to Twain but is one of my favorite quotes regarding san Francisco “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”.
AesopFan:
I’d be curious to hear more about your encounter with Joan of Arc. Perhaps not here, not now.
She upended my life and six months later I found myself a Christian again. Which didn’t stick but didn’t entirely go away either.
I enjoyed this. Thank you Neo. My favorites were about truth and honesty. But a couple made me laugh too.
How delightful to listen to good old Mark Twain while I am drinking my first cup of coffee. There are so many great quotes he shares and remember his great and perhaps best American novel was ‘Huckleberry Finn’ which has been banned in a lot of schools.
~ Thank You Neo ~
This ties in nicely with a few recent threads:
Strength in Lying:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=25455
“…The recent trial balloon launched by the inner party regarding a wealth tax is a good example of how the lying game works. The idea being floated is that billionaires will be subjected to a new tax that applies to their unrealized capital gains. They will pay a tax based on the potential profit from the sale of certain assets. Presumably, this will apply only to equities, the market value of which can be determined by the current trading price at the time the tax is assessed.
Right away, you see that everything about this is a lie. For starters, how does one determine if you are a billionaire? It is easy when it comes to oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, but further down the list it gets less clear. Calculating net worth is not as straight forward at this level as most assume. Of course, avoiding the tax will spawn an industry to help the rich hide their assets from this tax. Since that exists in other areas, this tax is a boon to the financial schemers who currently serve the rich.
Then you have the impracticality of the idea. When would the tax be levied, and would it be levied on the same asset every year? If you buy a stock in 2021 and it goes up ten percent, you get taxed on the ten percent. If it goes up again in 2022, do you pay a tax on it again or just the increase in 2022? What happens when you pay the tax on unrealized gains that disappear the day after you paid the tax? What about assets held in family trusts? Do they get taxed as well?
.
.
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Of course, this will never become law. It is just a sop to the mouth breathers on the far left who operate on massive corporate platforms while pretending to be anti-capitalists and socialists. It also allows the zombies in Conservative Inc. to come out from under their beds and do their libertarian dance. They get to put on the thin tie, throw on the Flock of Seagulls cassette and carry on like it is 1985. It is party night at the museum where everyone gets to pretend the outside world does not exist.
Everything about this drama is a lie, because it is just a drama. It is a story being told to arouse the passions of the crowd so they stop thinking about things that should matter to them, like the fact that gasoline prices have doubled, or their government lied about the Covid pandemic for two years. This is the nature of democratic politics. The winners are just the best liars. The losers never lose anything. They just have to come up with better lies so they can get another crack at the lying game.
.
.
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It may be that a hidden strength of the marketplace is that because no one can trust anyone and there is no neutral arbiter to enforce honestly, everyone has to be on their game all the time. Therefore, it boils off those who are less clever and less able to live by their own wits. The cost to the collective strength that comes from the lack of trust is less than the benefit that comes from stronger individual members. Deracinated clever liars are better than united trusting morons.
That may be why democracy is such a violent form of government. The Greeks were always fighting with one another and then with the Persians. America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war. Perhaps the hidden cost of that hidden strength of the market it is needs an enemy to bind the parts together. The reason liberal democracy looks a lot like fascism is the only way to bind the sticks together is with enemies, real and imagined.”
Growing up in high school, Twain was my absolute favorite. Of course now he is cancelled. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer have been removed from school libraries for quite awhile now.
Weekly Covid update after weekend data has come in. I’m still quite frustrated by the media and governments. I see reports of “covid rapidly spreading” even from conservative outlets. It’s a fabrication. Again, I wish we could post graphics.
National two week rolling average of new cases/day now at -20k; yesterday had a one day whopping drop of -115k. Serious cases now down to about 2600 equivalent to March of 2020. For comparison, serious cases reached a peak of 27000 in January of this year from the alpha. Peak serious cases from the delta was 15000 5 weeks ago. Overall time line for cases/day was 3 waves of the alpha the first 2 being about 26000 cases at day 55 and day 150; day zero for me at Feb 25, 2020. Largest alpha wave reached a peak of 86k/day at the end of January 2021. Delta peaked at 126k/day 55 days ago. For those interested in statistics, the large alpha peak had a FWHM of 77 days; the delta FWHM was 40 days. Compare cases and serious cases for the alpha and delta and it’s easy to see the alpha produced more serious cases, while the delta produced many more cases but fewer serious cases, ie delta more contagious but less virulent.
Of the 5 states I track, GA, FL, and NC all continue downward in both cases and deaths. NH and CO both showing opposite trends. NH’s cases are low in terms of national impact at about 300/day; CO at about 2k/day. What is interesting for both states is that both show almost exact same trend: about 40 days ago started a down trend that then reversed 10 days later and has been climbing since.
If unrealized cap gain tax applied to ‘billionaires’ was only applied to publicly-traded companies, because of easy valuation measurement, then there would be a major exit by ‘billionaires’ (however defined) into assets which are *not* publicly-traded & easily valued, hence driving down stock prices & maybe bond prices too. It would result in a search for privately-traded companies by those ‘billionaires’ and drive up the prices of these. (Good for those of us who have some private-company investments, at least temporarily) But once Congress figured out what is happening, they would impose the unrealized CG tax on those investments, too, resulting in the kind of problems that I outlined above.
At a young age I became rather obsessed with Sam Clemens and read a great deal by him and about him. A really incredible man and life. Printing press operator at the age of 12(?), riverboat pilot, gold prospector, journalist… Grew up in the midwest, spent his mid to late adulthood in the west then spent his later years in the east. America personified. There is so much tragedy in his autobiography, yet his life was not extraordinary in that regard. Hardship and tragedy were common things in America in the 1800s. Still are in a lot of the world.
Hats off to Shakespeare and Austen, Chaucer and Dickens, but, “All right then, I’ll go to hell!” just may be the greatest sentence ever written in English lit.
zaphod,
Your point yesterday(?) about wantonly ambitious people (I forget your precise term, but I use “Type A’s” as shorthand), along with your excerpt at 10:32am on this thread are real, valid issues concerning the American system of government, especially at this moment in time.
When they were fairly young I told each of my children one of the most difficult things they would have to learn to deal with, growing up in America, is that they are being marketed to all day, everyday, in everything; what toys and games they play with, what clothes they wear, what they eat, religion, health, education… I would explain that freedom and free choice are great things if one takes on the immense work and responsibility that are required to master freedom, but the downside of a truly free society is constant messaging from people who will want their money, time, or both.
Now that our most powerful corporations; Alphabet, Facebook, Coca-Cola, the television networks, movie companies… are all colluding with the Democrat Party, the messaging has grown, exponentially, to a tsunami that is in real danger of destroying us all.
As geoffb pointed out yesterday(?), now that America lacks an accepted, moral code, the Type A’s are running rampant amidst the chaos.
As zman wrote:
physicsguy @ 10:42am,
A guest post from you regarding COVID statistics and your research since the pandemic began, with graphs, would be a great read!
“…America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war…”
Um, er…are we absolutely certain about this?
(I mean, it SOUNDS really catchy…but is it actually true? Hey, maybe it sounds so good it doesn’t really HAVE TO be true!!)
Back to the real world…
“The Lion Whisperer”
https://youtu.be/-wK5mHXlO8o
Ozzie has NOTHING on this guy…well, except maybe more colorful language…
(And no, it’s not Jordan Peterson’s twin brother…)
That may be why democracy is such a violent form of government.
I’ve never figured out whether you’ve concluded you can just utter nonsense and get away with it by feigning breezy self-confidence, or if you’ve persuaded yourself you are knowledgeable and insightful, or if you just recycle some third party BS artist.
Art Deco:
I think that strange comment about democracies being so violent was a quote from this person “zman” who seems to be a real favorite of Zaphod’s. So in this case it’s “just recycle some third party BS artist.”
It’s an especially odd, nonsensical, and ignorant quote, though. Perhaps zman left out the rest of it, which would be “democracy is such a violent form of government except for all the others that have been tried” (see this).
Thank you physicsguy for helping to keep it real.
Neo, four of the most misquoted men in History are Sir Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Abraham Lincoln. The fact that they are misquoted so often is in a way a tribute to their wit and intelligence. In fact the International Churchill Society has a page dedicated to “False Quotes Attributed to Churchill”. One quote attributed to Churchill about “a lie going half way around the world before truth gets its pants (or shoes) on” actually belongs to Twain.
Hardball CNN interview with former NIH directory Francis Collins, who recently announced he’ll soon be resigning. (Yes, CNN—unbelievably.)
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nih-director-shredded-over-risky-research-wuhan-after-cnn-interview-goes-sideways
Might Francis Collins prove to be the “soft underbelly” of Anthony Fauci?
(Gotta attack at their weakest link…but CNN?? Could it be that “Biden” has finally decided to dump St. Anthony…?)
Related…to middle-class and working-class pushback:
“Revolt of the Essential Workers: The resurgent labor movement may be the greatest challenge yet to the top-down class warfare of the pandemic era”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revolt-essential-workers
+ Bonus
Durham continues to plug, plug, plug away…
“John Durham plans to call new witness in the Russia probe.”
https://twitter.com/AKA_RealDirty/status/1453026597158727683
H/T Lee Smith twitter feed for both.
Also:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-former-fbi-general-counsel-james-baker-testify-sussmann-case
And in honor of Mark Twain…it’s time for a little 21st-Century American humor (such as it is…):
“‘Defund the Police’ Advocate Ilhan Omar Faults Police for Minneapolis Crime Spike”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/10/defund-the-police-advocate-ilhan-omar-faults-police-for-minneapolis-crime-spike/
(And she said it with a straight face…)
BrooklynBoy,
Well… You are right it wasn’t Churchill, but it also wasn’t Twain. Or Clemens!
I noticed that quote when I watched the clip and almost wrote something about it not being Twain, but decided against it since it’s such a great quote, and it sounds “Twain’ian,” but it is not one of Twain’s.
I just found this page that does a pretty good rundown of the etymology of the “lie is halfway ’round the world” quote.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
}}} If you buy a stock in 2021 and it goes up ten percent, you get taxed on the ten percent. If it goes up again in 2022, do you pay a tax on it again or just the increase in 2022? What happens when you pay the tax on unrealized gains that disappear the day after you paid the tax? What about assets held in family trusts? Do they get taxed as well?
…
Of course, this will never become law.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. “Give us moar moar moar milk, you fat rich cow”!!
And… don’t bet on that for a moment.
They will happily kill the cow by overmilking it.
Because no one is going to blame THEM when the house of cards comes falling down.
RTF–
Twain did make a comment about lies, but his remark compares lies with cats: “One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”– from Pudd’nhead Wilson.
One of Twain’s better-known comments about Felis catus: “Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”– from his 1894 notebook.
Twain described one of his favorite cats– which he named Sour Mash– in his Autobiography: “[Sour Mash] was just that independent of criticism, and I think it was her supreme grace. In her industries she was remarkable. She was always busy. If she wasn’t exterminating grasshoppers she was exterminating snakes — for no snake had any terrors for her. . . . She was untiring in her energies. Every waking moment was precious to her; in it she would find something useful to do — and if she ran out of material and couldn’t find anything else to do she would have kittens. She always kept us supplied, and her families were of choice quality. She herself was a three-colored tortoise-shell, but she had no prejudices of breed, creed, or caste. She furnished us all kinds, all colors, with that impartiality which was so fine a part of her make. She allowed no dogs on the premises except those that belonged there. Visitors who brought their dogs along always had an opportunity to regret it. She hadn’t two plans for receiving a dog guest, but only one. She didn’t wait for the formality of an introduction to any dog, but promptly jumped on his back and rode him all over the farm. By my help she would send out cards, next day, and invite that dog to a garden party, but she never got an acceptance. The dog that had enjoyed her hospitalities once was willing to stand pat.”
More quotes and some pictures of Twain’s cats at the link: http://www.twainquotes.com/Cats.html
Regarding the zaphod, zman quote about democracies and violence…
I certainly don’t mean to speak for zaphod, he obviously doesn’t need the help (he’s likely second only to me when it comes to lengthy, meandering, often confusing defenses of absurd opinions). But since most folks are currently sleeping on his side of the globe, I’ll take a stab at it.
Regarding the statement about Democracies in general and “the Greeks,” that doesn’t seem worth agreement nor disagreement. War was a way of life for most all nations and empires at least through the early 20th century and it would be hard to attribute more or less of it to any particular system of government. Even pacifist societies like Tibet have to contend with it. As Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” I’ve heard it said, and I think it’s a truism, that no two democracies have gone to war against one another in the modern era. But that gets into splitting hairs over what a democracy is. North Korea has elections. Excuse me, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has elections.
I don’t see much point in quibbling with that first part. Seems sort-of arbitrary.
But the second part, “America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war.” If you change your perspective to that of a citizen on any other point on the globe what would it look like to you?
Kids in Germany grow up seeing U.S. tanks drive down their roads. People in France watch nearly nightly race riots or racial conflict in the U.S. In England and Wales there were 671 homicides in 2019, 32 killed in shootings. 786 in Chicago alone in the past 12 months. 23 shootings there just last weekend. You know those images of people wantonly and freely looting stores in San Francisco with no, legal repercussions? They show those same images on international television.
We have an entire, huge, industry pumping out a musical genre called, “Gangster Rap” to the world’s discotheques. Hollywood makes movies with body counts that would make Pol Pot blush. Western films, gangster films, war films, hell, even our sci-fi is typically about war and gore.
One out of every 100 adult Americans is incarcerated. About 2.5 million, including juvenille detention. Our closest competition is Russia, at about 60% our rate. Norway, Denmark, Germany… about 1/10th our rate.
We often start our major sporting events; Superbowl, World Series, with military fighter jet flyovers.
And I don’t even want to get started in what our military and CIA have done internationally. What nation’s armaments have caused more death since 1945? What’s the only country to use nuclear weapons in an act of aggression? How many countries have witnessed American “boots on the ground” in the past 50 years? Even if it’s humanitarian missions, U.S. kids don’t grow up seeing armed, foreign soldiers dressed in camo in their neighborhoods.
Look, I like living here and I feel very safe where I am currently typing this, and I know a lot of the arguments behind a lot of the foreign intervention, including selling expensive weapons to other nations, but to not understand that America appears hyper violent and warlike to the rest of the world is a very parochial perspective.
RTF–
As you note, the United States has been perceived as a violent society because of its fascination with gangsta culture as well as war in the military sense. Just one example: there is an hour-long documentary about the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the “Butcher of Prague,” that shows clips of the Nazi procession bearing Heydrich’s coffin to the Prague train station for the final journey to Berlin. The voiceover at 35:54 notes that “The British press called the occasion a gangster funeral in the pompous Chicago style.” Many educated Brits were genuinely disturbed by American gangster movies of the 1930s and thought they were bound to have a bad effect on British society as well as on the English language.
While I wouldn’t recommend watching the Heydrich documentary just before bedtime, it is well done (it received a certificate of merit at an international film festival), and you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whHbN8-E5Lg&ab_channel=rudylis
Physicsguy. Do you have the “infection fatality rates” by age group. I think they are all that matter, cases are just to get people excited and aren’t particularly accurate.
Excuse me, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has elections.
It doesn’t.
Kids in Germany grow up seeing U.S. tanks drive down their roads.
The tanks aren’t shooting at anyone. Last I checked, there were 35,000 American troops in Germany, or enough to occupy the Ruhr complex provided they were deployed as an occupation force; 90% of Germany’s population lives elsewhere, so I tend to doubt the cavalry component of our forces is all that obtrusive in Germany.
People in France watch nearly nightly race riots or racial conflict in the U.S.
No they don’t. Race riots were exceedingly infrequent between 1971 and 2020.
In England and Wales there were 671 homicides in 2019, 32 killed in shootings. 786 in Chicago alone in the past 12 months. 23 shootings there just last weekend. You know those images of people wantonly and freely looting stores in San Francisco with no, legal repercussions? They show those same images on international television.
The homicide rate in the United States as late as 2019 was about 5 per 100,000. It is lower in western Europe (where it is around 1.2 per 100,000), somewhat lower in eastern Europe (where it varies between 1 and 5 per 100,000), but (until quite recently) higher in Russia. In general, the United States has higher rates of violent crime (2x to 4x west European rates) but much lower rates of burglary and auto theft. The thing is, the United States is quite tranquil compared to tropical and southern Africa or compared to Latin America or compared to the Caribbean. Your TV watching Frogs give any thought to that?
We have an entire, huge, industry pumping out a musical genre called, “Gangster Rap” to the world’s discotheques. Hollywood makes movies with body counts that would make Pol Pot blush. Western films, gangster films, war films, hell, even our sci-fi is typically about war and gore.
There’s a market for action films in the Far East, ergo ” America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war. ” Can you keep track of your argument, please? As for music, in this country, the sum of R & B and Rap make up about 22% of the music sales in this country, with ‘gangsta rap’ a fraction of that. And do you fancy they’re not producing rap in Europe?
One out of every 100 adult Americans is incarcerated. About 2.5 million, including juvenille detention. Our closest competition is Russia, at about 60% our rate. Norway, Denmark, Germany… about 1/10th our rate.
So what?
We often start our major sporting events; Superbowl, World Series, with military fighter jet flyovers.
Again, so what?
And I don’t even want to get started in what our military and CIA have done internationally.
Don’t get into it because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
What’s the only country to use nuclear weapons in an act of aggression?
There is no such country. They were used to put an end to a war Japan wanted to wage and did over a period of 14 years wage, first with China and then with France, the Netherlands, Britain &c., and the US.
How many countries have witnessed American “boots on the ground” in the past 50 years? Even if it’s humanitarian missions, U.S. kids don’t grow up seeing armed, foreign soldiers dressed in camo in their neighborhoods.
No we don’t, because they’re not needed for any particular purpose.
I don’t think Dominican youths grown old have been traumatized because American troops and OAS troops were in Santo Domingo for six months in 1965. Or Panamanian youths because American troops were there for a period measured in weeks during 1989 and 1990. In fact, only four places have seen American combat troops for periods any longer than that: Korea, VietNam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Four occasions over a period of 76 years. If you wish to assess those situations, ask what the state of affairs might have been without those American troops.
Art Deco,
Have you spent any time outside of the U.S.?
I know you are not this dense, nor obtuse. You clearly understand my point (and I believe zaphod’s and zman’s) is one of perspective, not facts. How does one perceive things looking at the U.S. from the outside?
I can personally attest that many Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Afghanis, Iraqis, etc. get a particular image of Americans from dealing with American military deployed on their soil. Whether the tanks were firing or not, would it get your attention if you saw a Chinese tank lumbering down your street?
When’s the last time you saw a film produced in France that featured insanely muscled men, jacked up on steroids, firing machine guns indiscriminately? And all that pop music out of South Korea about selling drugs, murderin’ thugs and bangin’ ho’s.
C’mon, you’re better than this.
Art Deco,
Art Deco,
I can also promise you that many, many foreigners have the notion that racial unrest/riots is/are common in the U.S. Any foreigner I have asked always estimates a percentage non-white population in the U.S. at least double of the actual figure. “If it bleeds it leads.” International news about the U.S. often centers on racial difficulties. You may have noticed some of our politicians doing the same things.
Art Deco,
Your own stats list the U.S. homicide rate as at least 4 times that of other, 1st world nations, so you compare us with 3rd world nations to make things look better. Don’t you think folks in other 1st world nations notice the same thing?
Do you want to vacation in a land with 4 times the homicide rate of the one you live in?
“There’s a market for action films in the Far East?!”
That’s your excuse for why our popular entertainment is so often centered on violence? Was it the Far Eastern market that gave us Mario Puzo’s, “Godfather?” “Breaking Bad?” “The Sopranos?” “Terminator?” “Bonnie and Clyde?” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?” “Scarface?”
I know you love to be contrary, but these arguments can’t even make sense to you, can they?
… and your comeback for incarceration rates is, “So what?!”
If I told you there was a country with ten times the incarceration rate of the U.S. would you perceive it is more violent and dangerous than the U.S.? Of course you would, as do the people living in nations with 1/10th our rate.
I’ve watched U.S. sporting events in foreign countries. I assure you, many foreigners think the fighter jet flyovers are odd. Looks a lot like a display of military might. Because that’s what it is. A display of military might.
Rufus: “And I don’t even want to get started in what our military and CIA have done internationally.”
Art Deco: “Don’t get into it because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
1798-1800 France Undeclared U.S. naval war against France, U.S. Marines land in Puerto Plata
1801-1805 Tripoli War with Tripoli (Libya), called “First Barbary War”
1806 Spanish Mexico U.S. military force enter Spanish territory in headwaters of the Rio Grande
1806-1810 Spanish and French in Caribbean U.S. naval vessels attack French and Spanish shipping in the Caribbean
1810 Spanish West Florida U.S. troops invade and seize Western Florida, a Spanish possession
1812 Spanish East Florida U.S. troops seize Amelia Island and adjacent territories
1812 Britain War of 1812, includes U.S. naval and land operations
1813 Marquesas Island U.S. forces seize Nukahiva and establish first U.S. naval base in the Pacific
1814 Spanish (East Florida) U.S. troops seize Pensacola in Spanish East Florida
1814-1825 French, British and Spanish in Caribbean U.S. naval squadron engages French, British and Spanish shipping in the Caribbean
1815 Algiers and Tripoli U.S. naval fleet under Captain Stephen Decatur wages “Second Barbary War” in North Africa
1816-1819 Spanish East Florida U.S. troops attack and seize Nicholls’ Fort, Amelia Island and other strategic locations. Spain eventually cedes East Florida to the United States
1822-1825 Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico U.S. Marines land in numerous cities in the Spanish island of Cuba and also in Spanish Puerto Rico
1827 Greece U.S. Marines invade the Greek islands of Argentiere, Miconi and Andross
1831 Falkland/Malvinas Islands U.S. naval squadrons aggress the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic
1832 Sumatra, Dutch East Indies U.S. naval squadrons attack Qallah Battoo
1833 Argentina U.S. forces land in Buenos Aires and engage local combatants
1835-1836 Peru U.S. troops dispatched twice for counter-insurgency operations
1836 Mexico U.S. troops assist Texas war for independence
1837 Canada U.S. naval incident on the Canadian border leads to mobilization of a large force to invade Canada. War is narrowly averted
1838 Sumatra, Dutch East Indies U.S. naval forces sent to Sumatra for punitive expedition
1840-1841 Fiji U.S. naval forces deployed, U.S. Marines land
1841 Samoa U.S. naval forces deployed, U.S. Marines land
1842 Mexico U.S. naval forces temporarily seize cities of Monterey and San Diego
1843 China U.S. Marines land in Canton
1843 Ivory Coast U.S. Marines land
1846-1848 Mexico Full-scale war. Mexico cedes half of its territory to the U.S. by the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo
1849 Ottoman Empire (Turkey) U.S. naval force dispatched to Smyrna
1852-1853 Argentina U.S. Marines land in Buenos Aires
1854 Nicaragua U.S. Navy bombards and largely destroys city of San Juan del Norte. U.S. Marines land and set fire to the city
1854 Japan Commodore Perry and his fleet deploy at Yokohama
1855 Uruguay U.S. Marines land in Montevideo
1856 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. Marines land for counter-insurgency campaign
1856 China U.S. Marines deployed in Canton
1856 Hawaii U.S. naval forces seize small islands of Jarvis, Baker and Howland in the Hawaiian Islands
1857 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land
1858 Uruguay U.S. Marines land in Montevideo
1858 Fiji U.S. Marines land
1859 Paraguay Large U.S. naval force deployed
1859 China U.S. troops enter Shanghai
1859 Mexico U.S. military force enters northern area
1860 Portuguese West Africa U.S. troops land at Kissembo
1860 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. troops and naval forces deployed
1863 Japan U.S. troops land at Shimonoseki
1864 Japan U.S. troops landed in Yedo
1865 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. Marines landed
1866 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. troops invade and seize Matamoros, later withdraw
1866 China U.S. Marines land in Newchwang
1867 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land in Managua and Leon in Nicaragua
1867 Formosa Island (Taiwan) U.S. Marines land
1867 Midway Island U.S. naval forces seize this island in the Hawaiian Archipelago for a naval base
1868 Japan U.S. naval forces deployed at Osaka, Hiogo, Nagasaki, Yokohama and Negata
1868 Uruguay U.S. Marines land at Montevideo
1870 Colombia U.S. Marines land
1871 Korea U.S. forces land
1873 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. Marines land
1874 Hawaii U.S. sailors and marines land
1876 Mexico U.S. Army occupies Matamoros
1882 British Egypt U.S. troops land
1885 Colombia (Panama Region) U.S. troops land in Colon and Panama City
1885 Samoa U.S. naval force deployed
1887 Hawaii U.S. Navy gains right to build permanent naval base at Pearl Harbor
1888 Haiti U.S. troops land
1888 Samoa U.S. Marines land
1889 Samoa Clash with German naval forces
1890 Argentina U.S. sailors land in Buenos Aires
1891 Chile U.S. sailors land in the major port city of Valparaiso
1891 Haiti U.S. Marines land on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island
1893 Hawaii U.S. Marines and other naval forces land and overthrow the monarchy.
1894 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land at Bluefields on the eastern coast
1894-1895 China U.S. Marines are stationed at Tientsin and Beijing. A U.S. naval ship takes up position at Newchwang
1894-1896 Korea U.S. Marines land and remain in Seoul
1895 Colombia U.S. Marines are sent to the town Bocas del Toro
1896 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land in the port of Corinto
1898 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land at the port city of San Juan del Sur
1898 Guam U.S. naval forces seize Guam Island from Spain and the U.S. holds the island permanently
1898-1902 Cuba U.S. naval and land forces seize Cuba from Spain
1898 Puerto Rico U.S. naval and land forces seize Puerto Rico from Spain and the U.S. holds the island permanently
1898 Philippines U.S. naval forces defeat the Spanish fleet and the U.S. takes control of the country
1899 Philippines U.S. military units are reinforced for extensive counter-insurgency operations
1899 Samoa U.S. naval forces land
1899 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land at the port city of Bluefields
1900 China U.S. forces intervene in several cities
1901 Colombia/Panama U.S. Marines land
1902 Colombia/Panama U.S. forces land in Bocas de Toro
1903 Colombia/Panama With U.S. backing, a group in northern Colombia declares independence as the state of Panama, secure protectorate and canal
1903 Guam U.S. Navy begins development in Apra Harbor of a permanent base installation
1903 Honduras U.S. Marines go ashore at Puerto Cortez
1903 Dominican Republic U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo
1904-1905 Korea U.S. Marines land and stay in Seoul
1906-1909 Cuba U.S. Marines land. The U.S. builds a major U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay
1907 Nicaragua U.S. troops seize major centers
1907 Honduras U.S. Marines land and take up garrison in cities of Trujillo, Ceiba, Puerto Cortez, San Pedro, Laguna and Choloma
1908 Panama U.S. Marines land and carry out operations
1910 Nicaragua U.S. Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto
1911 Honduras U.S. Marines intervene
1911-1941 China The U.S. builds up its military presence in the country to a force of 5000 troops and a fleet of 44 vessels patrolling China’s coast and rivers
1912 Cuba U.S. sends army troops into combat in Havana
1912 Panama U.S. Army troops intervene
1912 Honduras U.S. Marines land
1912-1933 Nicaragua U.S. Marines intervene. A 20-year occupation of the country follows
1913 Mexico U.S. Marines land at Ciaris Estero
1914 Dominican Republic U.S. naval forces engage in battles in the city of Santo Domingo
1914 Mexico U.S. forces seize and occupy Mexico’s major port city of Veracrus from April through November
1915-1916 Mexico An expeditionary force of the U.S. Army under Gen. John J. Pershing crosses the Texas border and penetrates several hundred miles into Mexican territory. Eventually reinforced to over 11,000 officers and men
1914-1934 Haiti U.S. troops land, aerial bombardment leading to a 19-year U.S. military occupation
1916-1924 Dominican Republic U.S. military intervention leading to 8-year occupation
1917-1933 Cuba Landing of U.S. naval forces. Beginning of a 15-year occupation
1918-1920 Panama U.S. troops intervene, remain on “police duty” for over 2 years
1918-1922 Russia U.S. naval forces and army troops fight battles in several areas of the country during a five- year period
1919 Yugoslavia U.S. Marines intervene in Dalmatia
1919 Honduras U.S. Marines land
1920 Guatemala U.S. troops intervene
1922 Turkey U.S. Marines engaged in operations in Smyrna (Izmir)
1922-1927 China U.S. naval forces and troops deployed during 5-year period
1924-1925 Honduras U.S. troops land twice in two-year period
1925 Panama U.S. Marines land and engage in operations
1927-1934 China U.S. Marines and naval forces stationed throughout the country
1932 El Salvador U.S. naval forces intervene
1933 Cuba U.S. naval forces deployed
1934 China U.S. Marines land in Foochow
1944 Japan U.S. Navy bombs and occupies Japan
1945-1949 China U.S. forces flew tens of thousands of Nationalist Chinese troops into Japanese-controlled territory and allowed them to accept the Japanese surrender
1946 Iran U.S. troops deployed in northern province of Iran
1946-1949 China Major U.S. Army presence of about 100,000 troops, fighting, training and advising local combatants
1947-1949 Greece U.S. forces wage a 3-year counterinsurgency campaign
1948 Italy Heavy CIA involvement in national elections
1948-1954 Philippines Commando operations, “secret” CIA war
1949 Syria A coup aided by the CIA overthrow an elected parliamentary government in Syria, which had delayed approving an oil pipeline requested by U.S. international business interests in that region
1950-1953 Korea Major U.S. forces engaged in war in Korean peninsula
1950-1953 China U.S. and UN forces fought communist Chinese and North Korean troops in the Korean War, which saw South Korea successfully defended from invasion
1953 Iran CIA overthrows government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh
1954 Vietnam Financial and materiel support for colonial French military operations, leads eventually to direct military involvement
1954 Guatemala CIA overthrows the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman
1955-1970s Tibet CIA arms an indigenous insurgency in order to oppose the invasion and subsequent control of Tibet by China
1958 Lebanon U.S. Marines and army units totalling 14,000 land
1958 Panama Clashes between U.S. forces in Canal Zone and local citizens
1958 Indonesia CIA sponsors a failed revolt against Indonesian President Sukarno
1959 Haiti U.S. Marines land
1959 Cuba CIA attempts to depose Cuban president Fidel Castro through the Bay of Pigs Invasion
1960-1965 Democratic Republic of Congo CIA-backed overthrow and leads to assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba
1961 Dominican Republic CIA supports the overthrow of Rafael Trujillo. After a period of instability, U.S. troops invades the Dominican Republic in Operation Power Pack
1961-1973 Vietnam Gradual introduction of U.S. military advisors and Special Forces
1961 Cuba CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion
1962 Cuba Nuclear threat and U.S. naval blockade
1962 Laos CIA-backed military coup
1963 Ecuador CIA backs military overthrow of President Jose Maria Valesco Ibarra
1964 Panama Clashes between U.S. forces in Canal Zone and local citizens
1964 Brazil CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government of Joao Goulart and Gen. Castello Branco takes power
1964-1973 Laos U.S. troops fought at the request of the governments of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War against the military of North Vietnam and against Viet Cong, Pathet Lao, and Khmer Rouge insurgents
1965-1975 Vietnam Large commitment of U.S. military forces, including air, naval and ground units numbering up to 500,000+ troops. Full-scale war, lasting for ten years
1965 Indonesia CIA-backed army coup overthrows President Sukarno and brings General Suharto to power
1965 Congo CIA backed military coup overthrows President Joseph Kasavubu and brings Joseph Mobutu to power
1965-1966 Dominican Republic 23,000 U.S. troops land
1965-1973 Laos Bombing campaign begin, lasting eight years
1966 Ghana CIA-backed military coup outs President Kwame Nkrumah
1966-1967 Guatemala Extensive counter-insurgency operation
1969-1975 Cambodia CIA supports military coup against Prince Sihanouk, bringing Lon Nol to power. Intensive bombing for seven years along border with Vietnam
1970 Oman Counter-insurgency operation, including coordination with Iranian marine invasion
1970-1973 Chile CIA-backed military coup ousts government of President Salvador Allende. Gen. AugU.S.to Pinochet comes to power
1971-1973 Laos Invasion by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces
1972-1975 Iraq CIA arms Kurdish rebels fighting the Ba’athist government of Iraq
1975 Cambodia U.S. Marines land, engage in combat with government forces
1976-1992 Angola U.S. military and CIA operations
1977 Pakistan The United States stages a coup in Pakistan, overthrowing the regime of socialist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the Pakistan Peoples Party
1980 Iran Special operations units land in Iranian desert. Helicopter malfunction leads to aborting of planned raid
1981 Libya U.S. naval jets shoot down two Libyan jets in manoeuvres over the Mediterranean
1981-1992 El Salvador CIA and Special Forces begin a long counterinsurgency campaign
1981-1990 Nicaragua CIA directs exile “Contra” operations. U.S. air units drop sea mines in harbors
1982-1984 Lebanon U.S. Marines land and U.S. naval forces fire on local combatants
1983-1984 Grenada U.S. military forces invade Grenada and oust the government
1983-1989 Honduras Large program of U.S. military assistance aimed at conflict in Nicaragua
1984 Iran Two Iranian jets shot down over the Persian Gulf
1986 Libya U.S. aircraft bomb the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including direct strikes at the official residence of President Muamar al Qadaffi in response to Libyan involvement in international terrorism
1986 Bolivia U.S. Special Forces units engage in counter-insurgency
1987-1988 Iran U.S. naval forces block Iranian shipping. Civilian airliner shot down by missile cruiser
1989 Libya U.S. naval aircraft shoot down two Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra
1989 Philippines CIA and Special Forces involved in counterinsurgency
1989-1990 Panama 27,000 U.S. troops as well as U.S. naval and air power used to overthrow government of President Manuel Noriega
1990 Liberia U.S. troops deployed
1990-1991 Iraq Major U.S. military operation, including naval blockade, air strikes; large number of troops attack Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait
1991 Haiti CIA-backed U.S. military coup ousts President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
1991 Kuwait The U.S. intervenes in Kuwait after a series of failed diplomatic negotiations
1992-1994 Somalia U.S. special operations forces intervene
1992-1994 Yugoslavia Major role in NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro
1992-1996 Iraq Control of Iraqi airspace in north and south of the country with periodic attacks on air and ground targets
1993-1995 Bosnia Active U.S. military involvement with air and ground forces
1994-1996 Haiti U.S. troops depose military rulers and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office
1995 Croatia Krajina Serb airfields attacked
1996-1997 Zaire (Congo) U.S. Marines involved in operations in eastern region of the country
1996 Iraq CIA involved in the failed 1996 coup attempt against Saddam Hussein
1997 Liberia U.S. troops deployed
1998 Sudan Air strikes destroy country’s major pharmaceutical plant
1998 Afghanistan Attack on targets in the country
1998 Iraq Four days of intensive air and missile strikes
2001 Macedonia NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels
2001 Afghanistan Air attacks and ground operations oust Taliban government and install a new regime
2002-2003 Iraq Invasion with large ground, air and U.S. naval forces ousts government of Saddam Hussein and establishes new government
2003-Present Iraq Occupation force of 150,000 U.S. troops in protracted counter-insurgency war
2004 Haiti U.S. Marines land. CIA-backed forces overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
2006-2007 Somalia U.S. launches air strikes on suspected Islamists
2011 Libya The U.S. intervenes in the Libyan Civil War by providing air power to rebel forces. CIA to carries out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition. Muammar Gaddafi ultimately gets overthrown and killed
2012-2017 Syria CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops trains and arms nearly 10,000 Syrian rebel fighters
2013-2014 Iraq U.S. intervenes into Iraq and begin airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
2020 Iran A U.S. drone strike at Baghdad airport kills Qasem Soleimani, top general and one of the most powerful men in Iran
Which brings us to our recent, 8/29 drone strike, killing 10 civilians in Kabul
Paul in Boston. I agree, however it’s the case numbers that the politicians focus on, and they are collapsing at a high rate.
Rufus T. Firefly:
To figure out what that list actually means, however, one would have to figure out the “why” of each intervention: which was aggressive and which defensive (and/or the result of a treaty or agreement to defend), which was assistance in fighting off an outside aggressor, which helped to overthrow an internal oppressor, etc.. And then one would have to compare to the record of other countries.
I’m not saying all those military endeavors were “good wars.” But I’m saying that there are all different kinds of military actions for many different reasons with many different results. And there are other nations much more peaceful and others much more warlike.
When I lived overseas, in two “third world” countries, I found that people really think the whole USA is like what they see in the movies, on TV shows, and on CNN International.
R.T. Firefly. That’s quite a list there that is designed to put the US into a bad light. For example “ 1944 Japan U.S. Navy bombs and occupies Japan”. Gee, didn’t the Japanese do something or other before that which was a bit rude to the US? Maybe you can remind me.
You list is disinformation, it provides no background on each event and is worded to make the US a villain . Are you auditioning for a job at the NYT or NPR?
neo,
Agree 100%.
My overzealousness was strictly in reply to Art Deco’s schoolyard level challenge. I hoped the sheer weight of it would highlight the immaturity of his “Sez you” debate style. If he disagrees, let him pick each entry apart.
You clearly understand my point (and I believe zaphod’s and zman’s) is one of perspective, not facts. How does one perceive things looking at the U.S. from the outside?
That Rufus focuses on impressions rather than fact is odd, since my recollection of the Zman quote was a factual assertion that America is a hyper-violent democracy.
That NYC and Hollywood are giant media hubs that disseminate poison to much of the world is largely true but not that meaningful to me.
Here it is:
That may be why democracy is such a violent form of government. The Greeks were always fighting with one another and then with the Persians. America is a hyper-violent empire that is always looking to wage war. Perhaps the hidden cost of that hidden strength of the market it is needs an enemy to bind the parts together.
Statement of fact, I’d say. I find the last statement the most interesting and slightly less false. Even there, my impression is that all large societies gain cohesion from a common enemy. But I’m not sure any nations pushed the bogeyman strategy more than the Soviets, the PRC, and the DPRK. All the relevant nations did in WWII.
Paul in Boston,
I’m a huge fan of the U.S. and apple pie. The list was in response to Art Deco’s petty critique of a comment I made.
Sorry if it offends anyone. That was not the intent at all. It was intended to show the absurdity of Art’s frequent tactic of grabbing a line from someone’s comment, copying some data (often, barely tangentially related to the topic) from an Almanac and posting it as a rebuke.
TommyJay,
I would not refer to America as a hyper violent democracy. I sincerely do not think it is.
However, someone making that claim can point to homicide rates, incarceration rates, military spending, weapons manufacturing industry production… statistics and compare them to other, 1st world countries. “Hyper” is a subjective term. If the average rate of inflation among 1st world countries is 0.25 percent and one country has a rate of 2.5% I wouldn’t call it hyper inflation, but it is 10 times the average. I’m not sure what an ideal homicide or incarceration rate is, but if you live in Denmark and you read that 1 out of every 100 adults in the U.S. is in prison one searches for reasons.
We export a lot of violence in our movies, television programs, music and news and that informs the opinions of many foreigners.
Rufus,
Sorry about my response being overbearing, but one thing that pushes my button is permuting an argument in mid-stream. The issue for me is not about “hyper” definitions or similar. The issue is that media based perceptions and the effectiveness of propaganda have precisely zero to do with the facts.
Yeah, I’ve seen “hyper inflation” bandied about very recently, but no. An inflation rate of 5 or 7% annual is serious stuff for the USA, but nowhere near hyper.
Also, it is important to note that any nation can have a zero incarceration rate. Just close all the prisons. Easy peasy.
How many hand grenade bombing attacks has Sweden had in the last 10 or 15 years? About 100. I know part of the answer to that one, but it’s just a semi-relevant counterpoint. I certainly don’t think Sweden is a generally violent society.
TommyJay,
Agree 100%, TommyJay.
Which brings us to our recent, 8/29 drone strike, killing 10 civilians in Kabul
I’m fascinated to know which website compiled by an obsessive compulsive you consulted. The problem is one that is manifest. It’s an assemblage of trivia involving small numbers of troops, next-to-no casualties, and without any proper annotation of any of them. You’ve also padded it — adding five separate entries for the Spanish-American War — for example; added unproven assertions (CIA-backed, Haiti, 2004), &c. It’s just a fraudulent Gish Gallop you’ve cut and pasted.
If I told you there was a country with ten times the incarceration rate of the U.S. would you perceive it is more violent and dangerous than the U.S.? Of course you would, as do the people living in nations with 1/10th our rate.
No, I would perceive it as a country which spends more on policing and incarceration because it has a different sort of population which requires different methods of social control. If I have a homicide rate of 5 per 100,000 and the country next door does as well, that’s what interests me. If they get by with fewer incarcerated, that’s gravy for them. Of course this discussion has zippo to do with thirst for empire.
I’ve watched U.S. sporting events in foreign countries. I assure you, many foreigners think the fighter jet flyovers are odd.
Again, so what? What’s odd is that you defer to them.
Elections in North Korea are held every four-to-five years for the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), the country’s national legislature, and every four years for Local People’s Assemblies.
If you wish to pretend to be an idiot, keep at it. Other people who post here are perfectly aware of what the term ‘election’ actually means.
That’s your excuse for why our popular entertainment is so often centered on violence? Was it the Far Eastern market that gave us Mario Puzo’s, “Godfather?” “Breaking Bad?” “The Sopranos?” “Terminator?” “Bonnie and Clyde?” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?” “Scarface?”
It’s not an excuse. Action films are marketed internationally. They reflect their taste as well as ours. No clue what connection this is supposed to have to social violence in the United States, much less to warfare.
Do you really think the diminutive 60 year old mother of four in my office who was a Sopranos devotee was watching it waiting for the gun battles? My sister watched The Godfather series so many times the last time I visited her she was mouthing the dialogue. Fifty-three year old woman in a hospital bed. Five of these named are crime fiction. They’re stories with characters developed, characters remote from daily life. People find that engaging.
Do you want to vacation in a land with 4 times the homicide rate of the one you live in?
No. But I have an advantage over you and over them. I know perfectly well that over half the homicides occur in slum zones that 90% of the population do not live in and never enter, areas which have no tourist accommodations and nothing to see. I’m also aware that 90% of the homicides outside of that slum zone are solved by law enforcement, because perpetrators and victims are generally people in the same social circle, more often than not the same household. There are some core city zones where engaging assets are located proximate to slums and you have to be careful; I’ve lived in such places. There are costs and benefits to schlepping around Manhattan and DC. If you don’t want the costs, visit Maine. I wouldn’t know why people vacation here except for the natural assets, and those aren’t located near slums.
I can also promise you that many, many foreigners have the notion that racial unrest/riots is/are common in the U.S. Any foreigner I have asked always estimates a percentage non-white population in the U.S. at least double of the actual figure. “If it bleeds it leads.” International news about the U.S. often centers on racial difficulties.
Personally, I don’t give a damn what they think. I don’t expect Eurotrash to be all that knowledgeable about American life. The question at hand is what actual social conditions are (and how that relates to Zaphod’s assertions, remember them?), not what Eurotrash fancy they are.
I can personally attest that many Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Afghanis, Iraqis, etc. get a particular image of Americans from dealing with American military deployed on their soil. Whether the tanks were firing or not, would it get your attention if you saw a Chinese tank lumbering down your street?
A tank would get my attention. Since China is a hostile and sinister country, I’d certainly be perturbed seeing Chinese troops. The first three countries on your list could have instructed American forces to leave at any time. See France, which withdrew from the military component of NATO more than 50 years ago. They don’t, because they see the utility of having those forces there (in much reduced numbers, I might add) because we are neither hostile nor sinister. As for the Afghans, they’re getting a good and hard lesson of what it means to not have to encounter American troops on the road. In re Iraq, 97% of our forces were withdrawn nearly 10 years ago; the one’s remaining are distributed among 12 bases: one each on the northern, eastern, and southern border, three in Baghdad, four on the road running between Baghdad and Fallujah, and two others around Buqaba. I doubt you’re going to see them if you don’t live in those specific locations.
@Neo:
Can you seriously believe that the United States of America has some God-given special dispensation entitling and mandating it to engage in sticking its nose into all those foreign adventures in Rufus’s Very Long List?
Imagine you’re back in counseling days trying to get through to someone in the Cluster B Collection of Fun Stuff that “It’s not all Other People’s fault all of the time”. Just because some Communists and Fellow Travelers during all of your life to date have been spouting that the USA is a particularly violent meddling giant doesn’t mean it isn’t objectively true.
As far as this discussion goes, I’ve nothing much to say about violence in the USA. It’s obviously nearly all genetically driven and there’s not much to be done about that. Well there is.. but I guess your dislike of Bantustans implies that you’re against fencing off Gaza and the West Bank. Because violence and race are obviously no excuse for this kind of Machiavellian realism. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) the demographics in your idyllic corner of MA are favourable to a peaceful life. Not sure if you’re aware, but the Z Man lives in Baltimore.
@Rufus:
While I’m not much of a fan of Han ethnic swamping of Tibet, it’s a convenient myth that they were cute cuddly peace-loving monkish Buddhist shamans all. Very violent place and those Lamaseries were funded by vast feudal estates governed in shall we say very old fashioned ways. You didn’t want to be late with your tithing or get caught skipping Corvée. For an idea of what a friendly joint it was, Beast, Men, and Gods by Ossendowski (White Russian who made epic land journey to escape Bolsheviks) is valuable source.
Art Deco:
China is a sinister country?
Really? It’s an authoritarian country, yes.
Does it force parents to send their children to Drag Queen Story Hour?
Is it psyching itself up to genocide roughly half the population?
Unless I’m mistaken, it’s only invaded one other country since 1949 (Korean Intervention as ally of North was hardly an invasion): Vietnam.
As far as I can tell it hasn’t done anything egregiously stupidly evil such as the US Intervention in WWI with all the terrible downstream effects in Europe and Russia in the following decades.
I haven’t seen the Chinese ruling and financial elites strip mine the social capital of their own people to get rich the way yours have.
The United States is becoming more corrupt and misgoverned every year… On average every year, China has become less corrupt and better governed since ca. 2010. A long way to go, but it’s just had its Civil War and Tammany Halls, and Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and you’re about to see the Great White Fleet. That’s an upward trajectory… and there you are on the downward pointing fingers.
It’s a country. Ruled by assholes… as all nations are. It does evil things. So does yours. Have at least the imagination to put yourself in other nations’ shoes and see things from their perspective. You can still then say ‘OK… but this is MY country and so @#$% them!’… that’s cool… The big thing is to be able to do it with clear eyes and not believing some nonsensical BS about other side being stupid or perfidious or immoral or whatever… Always Clear and Cold Eyes. You get to live longer and cultivate the garden longer that way.
I’m not a big fan of the Chinese either. However…
The Tibet Museum in Lhasa contains torture instruments with which Buddhist monks maintained social order in Tibet pretty much until the Chinese drove the monks out in the 1950s.
There was a time when I was a “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” sort of hippie and I idealized Buddhism. I still admire Buddhism in many ways, but I’m over that.
My favourite bit of Mark Twain is in Life on the Mississippi.
He describes a sunset or sunrise he saw on the river when he was a Riverboat Pilot. It’s a long and poetic description of the transcendent beauty of the scene.
Then he shows us how a River Pilot sees the same scene: navigational markers, currents, the language of eddies and whirlpools which enables him to spot hidden hazards, and the hazards for which there is no visible sign which he’s had to memorise for that stretch of the river. Basically it’s a nightmare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live
Zaphod:
I must have missed class the day we covered the mass democide in the US on the order of tens of millions as in China.
@Huxley:
Relative went off to live in Sri Lanka. Met her after about a year or so and said “So I guess you’ve figured out Buddhism is not all cuddly and calm, eh?”. “Yup.”
It has its good points. SE Asian Buddhists (and I’ll chuck in the Sinhalese for convenience) are a lot less neurotic about Death than Westerners.
Bit different in China / Japan: There Buddhism never was a serious daily life religion for most people (Japanese warrior monk sects during more violent historical interludes excepted)… it was more a way of Disposing of the Dead and ensuring no trouble from irate ancestors and other spirits. Everyday religion was more folkish.
Sure there were Zen Monasteries and ascetics and scholars… but had little influence on the guy in the marketplace or the peasant in his field.
Old Chinese popular literature is full of Buddhist Monks behaving like they just escaped from the Canterbury Tales or the Decameron. Putting the Devil Back Into Hell… that kind of story.
It’s little known but Mark Twain, like George Bernard Shaw later, fell in complete sappy love with Joan of Arc, then wrote probably his worst book about the Maid of Orleans.
I read that book because I fell sappily in love with Joan too.
@Huxley:
Yes… but how many have they had lately?
It’s today and tomorrow that kills you. Not 1960.
Chinese are over their fratricidal blood lust now and for a while to come.
How does it help you with a big White Man Target between your shoulder blades to say BBBBut Hundred Flowers… Great Leap Forward… Tiananmen?
For the rest, I guess there weren’t enough Lakota and Sioux to make the big leagues. It’s always there. It’s only human. Frankly no big deal unless you happen to be in the moment. You might as well rail against the tides. But since you don’t own all the media, why bother? 😛
@Huxley:
Hadn’t read the Joan of Arc one. But sucker for anything Perfidious Albion, so must do.
Since we’re beset about here with fanatical warlike Meddling Internationalist New Englanders… how about A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur?
I saw this as a kid and was vastly entertained:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_Flying_Oddball
Back when Disney was Disney and wasn’t about turning your Daughters into lesbians. Nothing to do with ownership and management, I’m sure.
Did he not also do one about a Handy with a Spanner Yankee dropped into the late Western Roman Empire? Someone certainly did.
Chinese are over their fratricidal blood lust now and for a while to come.
@Zaphod:
So you say. But as long as they are only killing Uighurs now, well, alright then.
BTW, I’ve fallen back into my bad chess old habits, obsessively working chess problems and revisiting chess.com. There, if one refers to another commenter and uses the @ as prefix, the name appears in bright turquoise.
Is that common in the-more-hep environs? Is that why you use the ampersand?
Re: Unidentified Flying Oddball
@Zaphod:
I have an old-school Disney sweet tooth. (The other day in Open Topic I compared versions of “The Parent Trap.”)
I’ll check a missed Disney dessert with a decent recommendation.
@Zaphod:
You might like “Stripping the Gurus,” a debunking book by a guy who got over the Eastern Trip while slaving away at the Yogananda community in Ojai (California).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com
You can read the whole thing there or dl the pdf. It’s arranged by guru, so you don’t have to read the whole thing, but just check the ToC and click for the dirt.
@huxley:
Candleshoe was good, too!
@huxley:
“So you say. But as long as they are only killing Uighurs now, well, alright then.”
Well it *is* alright… Unless you’re an Uighur. Better the Uighurs than you or me. I may sound flippant, but honestly we have to get a little bit less wrapped up in what Humans A do to Humans B Over There. Humans kill other Tribes. It’s what we’re programmed to do. Best kept localised and better yet ritualised so as to maximise that lovely Benthamite Utility.
All you do when you try to stop Tribe A killing Tribe B next door is a bunch of other extra people killed as well. North worth it. Go complain to Ray Kurzweil and tell him to hurry the #@$% up if you don’t like it 🙂
Yes.. the @ is a habitual thing when referring to people in chats, discussions. Would have already been used by internet old timers in blog comments before Twitter came along and made it more well-known to the masses, I guess.
Now go write the n-Queens solvers in Scheme and Haskell!
zaphod, huxley,
Although it’s not Clemens’ most poignant work, I greatly enjoyed, “A Connecticut Yankee…” I’m almost positive I did see a black and white film of it once. I have no recollection of that Disney movie.
Was Clemens’ book the first time travel novel? It predates Wells’, “Time Machine” by a few years, but it doesn’t involve an actual invention for time travel. I don’t recall Clemens getting credit for inventing the genre so I must be forgetting one or two other man out of time novels?
Also not a novel, but, in my mind, very poignant, is Clemens’, “The Innocents Abroad.” One could do worse if one wants to have an idea of what life was like for an upper, middle class American before the turn of the 20th century and what a good part of the world was like then.
Regarding old school Disney, I love the University farces; “Flubber” and “Son of” (the MacMurray originals, not the abominable remakes), “The Computer that Wore Tennis Shoes,” “The Strongest Man in the World,” “The World’s Greatest Athlete*.”
*That one almost certainly feeds into zaphod’s nostalgia for African colonialism. I haven’t seen it in decades, but I imagine there are scenes that make it as unscreenable today as, “Song of the South.”
Zaphod:
Count me as old-fashioned, but when you’re killing tens of millions of citizens, it becomes a whole ‘nother ball game.
If Bill Ayers had gotten a crack at transforming America, maybe.
According to the undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Weather Underground, Ayers ballparked the number at 25 million Americans.
Zaphod,
It may be a part of human nature to war based on extrinsic characteristics, but, like a lot of things in our nature it can be overcome.
I tend to lean towards the evolutionary theory that male humans evolved with a desire to copulate often, with multiple partners and female humans evolved with a desire to find a mate who will stick around, at least for the kid’s first few years. It may have made sense when disease, famine, tsunami, lava and predatory animals were continual threats, but mating for life is the most practical way to go in modern, 1st world cultures, so I’ve adapted and become fully domesticated. So far it seems like my wife is also onboard with the strategy.
It seems to be something many of my fellow man struggle with. Fighting evolution can be difficult. But does that mean we throw in the towel and revert to harems and eunuchs? When a man and a woman raise children together the children seem to fare better than when the man goes on walkabout.
I also believe we’re bred to eat when food is available, and want to eat the most caloric food available, because for all of humanity up until about 50 years ago 99.9999999999% of humans struggled to find enough calories to survive to adulthood. But I also know if I eat what I want, when I want, it will be detrimental to my long term survival due to the abundance of cheap, high caloric (and great tasting!) food at the local grocers’. I see a lot of my peers failing at the task of resisting those evolutionary urges. It’s difficult. Really difficult. But just because it’s difficult do we give up?
So even if you are right, and tribalism is bred into us, I don’t see how or why we would stop trying to elevate one another above the urge for genocide through reason and charity. Just like monogamy or limiting one’s food intake, it won’t work all the time, fighting nature is hard, but if one knows it is the right thing to do one must, at least, try. No?
huxley,
Along with Joan of Arc Sam Clemens became a great fan and friend of Hellen Keller (although he never became a friend of Joan of Arc). Helen and he got along famously. I’ve read several statements from contemporaries claiming Keller could be quite the b*tch, but I find it hard to believe since Clemens was a fan and he seemed to have a good radar for frauds, phonies and fops. Although he did get taken to the cleaners by several inventors claiming to have made working typewriters, so he wasn’t perfect.
@Rufus:
I’m all for self-improvement and reaching for the light. Really.
Realistically this can only be done of their own volition by a tiny fraction of the populace everywhere. The rest requires some form of coercion.
Go to the Mall.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Twain was a man of Great Enthusiasms and Strong Opinions. He considered his Joan of Arc book to be his best, which I find more than a bit weird.
Thinking about Twain now, I’d say his closest literary successor was Robert Heinlein. I’m probably not the only person to think of that. I can hear Twain in Hemingway too.
Hemingway… Time to plug The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber again! Every 15 year old boy should be made to read it.
Helen Keller was quite the Radical Progressive Bitch. How many of use learned that fact in the classroom back when? Mostly we did not… she had already been sanctified by the victors because the battle had already been won… and our classrooms were already pozzed. Just we did not know it.
Oddly I don’t recall hearing of the Joan of Arc book but I will seek it out. Sounds right up my alley, which is why it’s so odd I don’t recall hearing of it. As I wrote, I became obsessed with Twain at a very young age though, 7(?), and I read a lot of his stuff around then. I mainly remember the things I re-read later.
Also odd, I’ve never thought about similar authors until I read your comment. Hmmm… Hemingway? I don’t see it. Several authors come to mind, Melville, Irving, Hawthorne… but none have the additional component of his humor. Not an author, but I could picture Abe Lincoln writing something akin to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog…” as a crowd warm up for a stump speech.
The only author I can currently think of who wrote so accurately from the perspective of a teen as Clemens did is J.K. Rowling. I also imagine Sam Clemens and Ted Geisel could have enjoyed one another’s company, had they been contemporaries. And Jack London. I don’t know why, but I have a hunch Hemingway would annoy Clemens.
“I have a hunch Hemingway would annoy Clemens.”
Imagine sewing him into a sack with Norman Mailer. And Helen Keller.
Rufus:
The Twain sound I hear in Hemingway (and Heinlein) is the general opinionating about life on the fly that these authors IMO indulge. It would be annoying, but they (YMMV) are charming enough to be worth the indulgence.
True and Funny:
Squid Game:
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/088/844/172/original/39351be6f9ff193a.jpg
I’m imagining Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw discussing Joan of Arc.
It doesn’t go well.
So how about those Moon and Mars Bases?
This is not me being a Turd-flinging Monkey. These are serious questions.
https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2021/10/26/a-land-between-dread-and-desire/
“In the 1820s, America was a land of “becoming.” Two hundred years later, America is very largely a land of “having become.” In the 1820s, Hegel could call America a “land of desire.” Two-hundred years later, more and more think to call America a land of dread. Dread was always implicit in this land of desire, and our “higher men” have always felt the fatal world-fear when they imagined our consummation; but the sense of dread has grown and spread as work has passed into works, and as this nation has thereby passed “from maturity to old age
The dead of winter is implicit in the blooms of spring, but men in tune with the seasons stack their firewood in the fall. Here is what Spengler says about those who feel and do not feel the dread.
“Only the spiritually dead man of the autumnal cities—Hammurabi’s Babylon, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Islamic Bagdad, Paris and Berlin today—only the pure intellectual, the sophist, the sensualist, the Darwinian, loses it or is able to evade it by setting up a secretless ‘scientific worldview’ between himself and the alien”
Zaphod —
Did he not also do one about a Handy with a Spanner Yankee dropped into the late Western Roman Empire? Someone certainly did.
I think you’re thinking of Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp, published in 1941. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall
@Bryan Lovely:
Thanks. Bingo!
Zaphod,
“Realistically this can only be done of their own volition by a tiny fraction of the populace everywhere. The rest requires some form of coercion.”
I agree it can only be done of one’s own volition. I do not agree it is only achievable by a tiny fraction of the populace.
Coercion is the opposite of volition.
@ huxley > “I’m imagining Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw discussing Joan of Arc.
It doesn’t go well.”
Understatement of the year.
I invested several years into studying The Maid of Orléans (quite some time ago), and have a great respect for her. IMO, both Twain and Shaw were projecting a lot of their own personal hobbyhorses onto the movie screen of her life.
Quick over-view, without any of the details that make her story so compelling, but lots of pictures.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/maid-of-orleans-joan-of-arc.html
@Rufus:
“I do not agree it is only achievable by a tiny fraction of the populace.”
Like I said… Been to the Mall lately?
https://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
Rufus T. Firefly:
Hemingway and Clemens would have bonded over their mutual love of cats.
Rufus T. Firefly
Thanks for the correction on the “a lie is halfway around the world… ” quote. I do recall having read that it comes from Twain but there are a lot of false attributions on the Internet.
Another false quote attributed to Twain but is one of my favorite quotes regarding san Francisco “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”.
AesopFan:
I’d be curious to hear more about your encounter with Joan of Arc. Perhaps not here, not now.
She upended my life and six months later I found myself a Christian again. Which didn’t stick but didn’t entirely go away either.
@ huxley – see a partial reply here
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/10/29/january-6th-has-legs/#comment-2586173