[ExI] I wish this was fake news

Tue Mar 13 04:35:15 UTC 2018

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Will Steinberg
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 8:15 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] I wish this was fake news

>…Getting rid of Trump does not get rid of the problem.  It will happen again and again until we address it.  The Trump situation is similar to a manic episode.  To fix America we must fix the people's problems.  Starting perhaps by less hate-the-other, more reaching across the aisle (corpus callosum?) even if you think your enemy is despicable.   We'll all assimilate each other whether you like it or not.

>…You think a bunch of maniacs won't vote for a maniac again?  Total denial…

We always had a credible common enemy.  Without a common enemy, every society will enter into warfare with itself.  In early US, we had the British, then again in 1812.  I was only recently aware that some portion of US society still considered the crown a viable enemy up until about the late 1840s and possibly into the 1850s but it became clear to everyone that the British were not coming.  Then it was time for a Civil war.

Had not the Great War come along when it did, the US would surely have gone at it again, but we were saved by Europe’s wars, then the rise of Communism.  OK then.

What did we have after 1989?  For a while we could assume the breakup of the USSR was a trick.  I believed it for a long time.  But I have met enough Russians and Ukrainians who insist the commies really did fold their tents and go away.  

Our civil war would have started before now but for the attack on the twin towers.  That bought us about a decade or so, but eventually we realized they will not suffice as a common enemy: they don’t have nukes.  The North Koreans have a nuke, but they are starving.  Even so, they can’t deliver it without some additional testing, and now they seem nearly ready to bargain that away for a few heavily laden freight ships full of rice.

So now the US is back to its longstanding challenge of an inadequate common enemy, and Europe Inc seems to be suffering from the same problem.

So… we have memetic warfare.

I would suggest we all team up against the Russians like the good old days but… modern socialism and modern capitalism are similar to an extent that they have become difficult to distinguish from each other.  

So what do we do?  Recognize that we are involved in memetic warfare and live with it?  The Russians (or whoever did it) kicked our butts in the first round: they managed to get both major parties to nominate their worst candidate, the least likely to unify the country.  They won that one.  Now what?

spike

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