I need time to respond to this, after some reflection. It is high quality and densely packed with observations. I’ll get back to you.

Your total inability to attribute anything positive to nationalists speaks volumes.

More black and white thinking. I attribute many positive things to nationalists, like myself and coconuts.

FYI, I have a life-affirming vision for Europeans. Not one where their nations are treated like hotels or exploitable economic zones, and not one where they themselves are seen as replaceable cogs. Not one where they vanish out of existence.

Weird to state you have an affirming vision and then only give a bunch of nots.

I am not such a great hereditarian that I think culture counts for nothing.

Say something about us white people that isn’t riddled with disdain.

A nationalist would be able to formulate some policy.

And yet you’ve done no such thing.

Your refrain seems to be that everything will self-correct, that things have never been so good, and nationalists should not concern themselves with it because they are terrible people anyway.

Things will be ok, they haven’t been better and nationalists, if we want to influence the future, should be better people.

No nationalist would make apologia or endorse the status quo

I’m with white people. That’s all. Through disagreements with my ideas and agreements.

As for my own policies, I’d end all non-white migration to Britain bar an exhaustively selected 1000 a year. I would also offer all non-white people in Britain £100,000 as a payment for them leaving and giving up their citizenship forever. Furthermore, I would reduce a British couple’s income tax by perhaps 5 or 10% per child they had.

The intention, and the sun’s might need to be adjusted, would be to return to a positive TFR, centred on the middle class and above, as well as to return to Japanese levels of demography.

It is how I chose to respond to the unnecessary rudeness in his random interjection. I stand by it one hundred percent.

Nevermind that the last comment before that one he wrote to me was another random interjection to accuse me of being a narcissist psychopath sociopath.

Pointing out that I am not his mother and that he has serious mother issues is merely giving back his messed up energy to him.

But thanks for your intervention. It sort of demonstrates you care. Not enough to withhold judgement prior to actually looking back a little bit, but enough to write down your first reaction. That’s something.

Yes, you’ve won. Absolute total victory. Now go and enjoy exactly how this success of yours makes you feel.

You’re proving my point. There’s nothing positive in your vision. Just bitterness, resentment and hatred all around, except for Jews, whom you seem to have incredible respect for.

In fact, how you perceive white people appears to be exactly how you don’t want white people to be, Meaning that you have nothing but contempt for us, and how you perceive Jews is how you want white people to actually be instead, meaning you have tremendous respect for them.

My personal belief is that Britain would have been much better off if it had implemented and enforced an immigration policy equivalent to Japan’s. But the immigrants to Britain, and their descendants, are not hateful, or unpleasant, or deserving of cruel treatment. Most are great people, like most people, even you, though you might want to discover that last bit. You should try “loving kindness” meditations off YouTube.

You seem to mistakenly assume the goal of life is to accumulate the most physical things possible

No, and nothing I’ve written should give that impression. You’re projecting again. We were discussing economics, therefore economic production was a relevant point.

so for your, the “wealth” of people in Arkansas is impressive.

It is undoubtedly an impressive economic achievement.

Yet, there is more spontaneous joy and happiness in a village without running water in the jungle in the Philippines than in the soulless Walmart-driven suburbs of any Arkansas town. And I have been to both – I doubt you have. I doubt you’ve ever been out of a large liberal city, and you’ve certainly never been out of European civilization

Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. And I’ve been to plenty of places, thank you. And not as some halfwit backpacker who thinks he is spiritually enlightened but can’t even get over his mommy issues.

Similarly, human beings are much happier living in poorer but more equal societies

I’ve heard this from every halfwit backpacker I’ve ever met in those poorer countries. They romanticise the locals but never get to actually know them. Relying on their ignorant first impressions, that the locals are so keen to make good. Usually the locals have secret rude names for those deluded dirty foreigners, in one case equivalent to “stray dog.”

Capitalism

Your entire ranting description of what you perceive as “capitalism” might also serve as a description for you mum. This is not a coincidence. You merely see your own shadow. Try to learn to understand that shadow, rather than project it everywhere. You’ll feel better.

But hey, statistically, they are wealthier than people in Hong Kong, not to mention that village in the jungle. And that’s what matters – how many “points” you’ve accumulated in the game of life.

I’m sorry you feel deep down that you’ve lost at the game of accumulating points in life. But honestly, most people don’t care.

Vague capitalism works. Institutional functioning is what best enables it. That is derived from many factors, but a key and often ignored factor is the smartness and size of the smart fraction. The United States absolutely dominates there and so dominates economically. This is why people from Arkansas are richer than those from Hong Kong. The Arkansas people are lifted up by the brightest and most dynamic Americans.

Hayek solved why socialism fails. The market is an information processing machine. Socialism is akin to thinking you can get alpha by stock picking, but also by putting the most inept in charge of picking stocks, and making them pick absolutely everything. Capitalism is putting your money into an index fund. Index funds win every time. Socialism could just about function in agrarian and tractor producing economies. It is ridiculous now, and only something that totally ignorant people or ideologues propose.

Obviously pure capitalism also fails, despite people not wanting it to, because it results in politically undesirable outcomes and people rebel.

Probably what is is also what should be.

If a mediocre country’s elite really want to improve that country then applying the basic international consensus on economics is a good idea, but that is just a start. The real work is in the stuff LKY did. Relentlessly making institutions better. Institutions are gigantic pieces of technology based around established processes and procedures for improving these processes. If you understand this, you’ll also understand why the Russians are failing in Ukraine and cannot fix themselves. Their military processes are all broken and cannot be changed in the course of months or even years. Dominic Cummings also writes about this in relation to the British civil service. This stuff is hard and involves crushing institutional interests to improve them.

Other than that, eugenics/culture can help, but the timeline is extremely long and the intelligence of the average person matters more for how they organise their own life than it does for the economy. Most jobs just don’t require much brightness, and they require less and less, not more and more.

There. Solved. Lol.

Putin chose to invade Ukraine. Ukraine did not invade Russia. You’re probably someone who beats their spouse and thinks they actually attacked you, because your fists are bruised.

But I don’t find the idea that support for nationalism has suddenly organically collapsed in the past 10 years plausible, at least in the UK. There used to be a far-right party until it imploded in the early 2010s.

I do.

Racist attitudes are much diminished, and those attitudes, unfortunately, turned out to be the vast majority of their appeal.

So when those attitudes turned out to be based on hysteria and hatred, that did it for nationalism.

The anti-nationalists were right about why the vast majority of nationalists supported nationalism, even though they were wrong about the best of nationalism itself and how it would make a better country for living in.

Polls on these issues now seem to show divisions growing rather than disappearing.

Nationalism requires government action and any poll that doesn’t balance off supposed support for nationalist action with the cost, isn’t getting an honest answer.

E.g are you against multiculturalism and do you want your neighbour deported?

The elections are the best polls as they include trade-offs and nationalist parties could have been voted for many, many times, but never really were. That’s just a fact.

So there may be a current of opinion that doesn’t yet have much of an expression.

Anyone can go to the relevant parts of the internet and find places to make that expression, but audiences for such are tiny. It has literally never been easier given that we are connected to it 24/7 by super easy smartphones, yet never have fewer people done so.

I am a nationalist, so it isn’t like it is pleasing to admit all of this stuff, but all of the excuses for the fact that people never really voted for genuinely nationalist politics and avoid engaging with nationalist ideas are just so much hot air.

People buy illegal drugs, pirate films, queue for days for the latest iPhone, engage in difficult jobs and all manner of things that are not completely easy, and literally everyone does some of these things, yet nationalists have been blaming things like getting censored off YouTube for the lack of nationalist popularity. This is absurd. There are no serious barriers to engaging with nationalist content, nor making it, nor organising. Yet the numbers involved are miniscule. This is because most people are completely unpersuaded and disinterested.

My basic thesis as to why this is is that many can see the value of the ideas, but balk at the cost of racism, hatred and putting the types of people who end up as nationalists in charge. They therefore dislike us. And that is clear. I can talk about nationalist politics and get away with it because I’m just about the most delicate, sensitive and empathetic conversationalist there is, when I want to be. But the basic ideas are extremely unpopular because of the costs quite reasonably associated with them. And all of the nationalist excuses for that just seem limp and pathetic to non-nationalists.

The only excuse I’ll say is this: once marginalised, nationalism ended up chock full of marginal personalities, and has never recovered from being controlled by so many with antisocial and otherwise poisonous traits. Sane and reasonable nationalists are often immune to noticing this because their standard for sane and reasonable is a tiny minority of a tiny minority. That is the sane and reasonable people within nationalism. They therefore have incredibly low expectations. But look around at the comment board at Unz for example. These people are the worst. And they absolutely dominate most nationalist movements. Normies are correct for rejecting us as whatever our abstract policies might be, they’d actually result in putting these people in charge, and that would be infinitely worse than the status quo.

My comment was nothing but an amusing quote from Hayek. Sorry that wasn’t clear. Hayek, of course, being genuinely brilliant, but liable to some of the criticism you allege.

Schopenhauer, Lacan, Nietzsche and late Wittgenstein are worth a read.

Yeah, Kolomoisky is such a big guy for the US and Zelensky that Zelensky recently had the anti-corruption police raid his home and the US have had him under sanctions for quite some time as well as banning him from visiting. If Jews control the US and Kolomoisky is a hero to Jews, how is this possible?

The corrupt and venal freak plays both sides, but has been vocally pro-Putin in recent years as Ukraine has looked to clear out the scumbags, while Putin will always invite them in, like Yanukovich and Medvechuk and all those those and losers.

As for Andrew Joyce’s criticism of Ukrainian nationalism, it is typical of the loser supposed right. Someone somewhere is having success and he can’t stand it, so the cattiness comes out. A politics of jealousy is a politics of bitter incompetents. Go back to obsessing over how Jews hypnotically made you a pervert or whatever you normally do.

The leader visited Britain to train some British nationalists about 7 years ago. The nationalist group in question were well-meaning early 20 something and fun, though of course they got horrible publicity. The two I met and spoke to a few times, from the group, were bright and decent individuals and they liked this Russian MMA nationalist.

The Ukrainian Bakhmut is a Tartar borrow-word meaning something like “Warhorse”. I don’t know why white people like the Ukies would use Tartar words.

Most white people aren’t totally pathetic and can use words from any language they want without feeling threatened or insecure.

Like Chicago.

with the pro-LGBT stance

I’m with white Europeans, and therefore I’m with openness to LGBT to some degree.

Otherwise, I have no personal issue with such people, except T are deluded and often trying to force others to provide supply to their delusions, and LG are sexually dysfunctional.

I don’t think this makes me “pro-LGBT” by any ordinary definition.

I think she’s picking on you now because you do display what may be perceived by some as “weakness”

Close. I dislike unagentic views. I dislike things being stuck in the unconscious and I am willing to point this out, kindly or cruelly, to those who might snap out of it. I encourage people to know themselves.

Maudlin and victim-centred politics, which are the opposite of this, are the worst and particularly galling when criticising Ukrainians, who have more right to those politics than most, but the courage to not end up as whiny losers anyway.

Basically, man or woman, own your stuff, even your vulnerabilities, and don’t pretend they are those of whatever group you’ve decided to scapegoat for your own unacknowledged insecurities or perceived inadequacies.

Anyone who can do this is fine by me.

I’m not sure why you think this. On the specific example of forming a nationalist political party (I think we were talking about something like this?), why would it be easier to do now in the UK than before?

I don’t think this is any harder, except that what would make a nationalist party would have even less support.

Why think it is easier to engage in online propaganda for causes like this now, compared to say in 2015-16?

I don’t count that as a sufficiently different era when we’re talking about history, but it is likely not harder than then anuway. The added censorship is counteracted by the proliferation of other platforms that anyone can visit if they want, and by the even more terminally online nature of near everyone.

You could see it in positive terms as ethnocentrism based on love and appreciation of one’s own ethnic group, how it has sustained and helped give its members life, its cultural inheritance and so on. People might want to protect their group and ensure it endures in the face of future uncertainties. But I think the end result will be similar to what I described if the predictions around demographic change prove correct.

I totally agree, but the proponents of such, including myself, were never able to separate that out from the hateful behaviour of our fellow travellers. Just look at the comments on Unz and the general insanity.

Is this unfair? Not really. It just is. No one wants to follow the kind of scum that so frequently rose to the top of nationalist movements. Some were good people, but the average was not. We should recognise this fact easily.

And given a choice of the status quo or the Daily Stormer, I’ll pick the status quo every time. As would anyone sane. The multicultural elites were bad, but everyone else was worse, which I guess means the elites weren’t so bad after all.

Without hate speech laws and Holocaust memorial day and similar teaching, I think it would have gradually faded from popular memory, given that political antisemitism was never a big thing even before these were instituted and plenty of people were already against it. Zemmour’s description of the treatment of the Holocaust in French culture in the 80s-90s reminded me of the UK, apart from anti-Semitism being a bigger thing in pre-1945 French politics.

Probably, but I don’t think the Holocaust is important to what people think now anyway. Except about the “Holocaust never happened and we’d do it again” lot, obviously, as they come across ludicrously psychopathic.

You’re not wrong, but he gave it out repeatedly, so I gave it back. Did I escalate? Absolutely.

Do I regret it? A little. Or at least I would substantially, if I didn’t assume any apology wouldn’t be returned with some catty comment. I could be wrong. Let’s see

@German_Reader

I am sorry for my harshly personal words, actually without regrets, no matter your response. So I am sorry unreservedly.

Hayek is equal best Hayek. Sorry Yahya:

I don’t have many strong dislikes. I admit that as a teacher — I have no racial prejudices in general — but there were certain types, and conspicuous among them the Near Eastern populations, which I still dislike because they are fundamentally dishonest. And I must say dishonesty is a thing I intensely dislike. It was a type which, in my childhood in Austria, was described as Levantine, typical of the people of the eastern Mediterranean. But I encountered it later, and I have a profound dislike for the typical Indian students at the London School of Economics, which I admit are all one type–Bengali moneylender sons. They are to me a detestable type, I admit, but not with any racial feeling. I have found a little of the same amongst the Egyptians–basically a lack of honesty in them.

If I advise speaking about honesty, I think honesty is really the best expression of what I call the morals of a civilized society. Primitive man lacks a conception of honesty.

You were shilling for Russia’s masterful encirclement of Ukrainian forces more than a year ago. What came of that?

That’s why Russia was able to march up to Kiev’s doorstep so easily – most of the Ukrainian forces are in the East, where they are in the process of being encircled.

This is fair, but they’ve done pretty well. Certainly better than anyone would ever have expected. Even if you disagree with them, you can respect them for that. If Russia could only do so then Russia might try to make friends of them, rather than guarantee them as enemies.

You’re just an old and impotent SJW.

He says what’s nice. That they’re pleasingly dense. Sometimes the basic things in life are the best. Like entering a warm room from the cold, a soft feeling blanket or a cool breeze.

If there was the kind of enormous media power that you claim, what would they do and then delete from public consciousness?

I know you think, with your tortured arguments, that this is what has happened, but ask yourself why aren’t they taking advantage of it in much more advantageous ways?

My hypothesis is that things are not top down. You hypothesis involves some version of people achieving total power and being totally incompentent, yet maintaining that power and doing nothing that makes any sort of sense.

I can see why you like your version. It flatters you greatly. I just can’t work out how you persuade yourself that it is logical.

You’re right that this madness is pointless, and yet you cheerlead for Putin and his invasion.

Thatcher had Putin’s number decades ago, and she noticed how little regard he had for the lives of his people.

They seem to have escaped Russian domination, which is quite a feat. Kyiv, Kharkhiv and Kherson are now forever safe from Russian rule and places like Belarus can only hope to one day be in a similar position.

Almost nobody is interested in taking thesis vs. antithesis to the level of synthesis.

Transcendental thinking is just not something that comes naturally to most people.

The truth is that people who think they disdain sharp categories end up implicitly obsessing over them and vice versa.

Only the superficially non-hierachical thinkers could come up with something as rigid and divided as the intersectional totem pole. It just must not be explicitly spoken.

The difficulty with paradoxical thinking and seeing one’s own assumptions what drives most of the passion in politics. As people dramatise that which they cannot see and blame whomever they think they’re against.

Is Ukrainian intelligence really stupid enough to publicly endorse these Neo-nazi low-lifes?

Can you ever write something correct. Ukraine did not endorse this. They expressed some schadenfreude, which is more than understandable given that Russia hundreds of thousands of troops engaged in these type of activities every day in Ukraine. Re-read my last post to you. And re-read it again.

Did he wrote for the Daily Stormer?

Yes, but the probability, speed and decisiveness of such a breakthrough is directly related to the amount of Western support. I am doubtless that the Ukrainians think they can do it in June and they’ve been shown to have a good judgement of their abilities so far, but long range missile systems, and potentially other technological surprises, would end this war more quickly and be good for everyone, but Putin himself.

Saker’s commenters are ridiculous. Everything the Saker wrote for years has been definitively demonstrated as fan fiction. He left in total and deserved shame.

doesn’t negate the fact that Ukrainian nationalists dealt with the crisis that started in 2013/14 in anything but “peaceful and democratic” fashion

Look, you aged and neurotic hausfrau, you got all shrill over the Ukrainian President supposedly “gloating” and compared it to the twice-in-a-decade Russian invasion of Ukraine. You’re the most maudlin and pathetic commenter on a website chock full of them. I assume your idea of defending yourself from a foreign invasion would involve you trying to shame the younger generation of your own country for not feeding and f*cking the foreign soldiers because you’d be jealous of them. Of course the Ukrainian response involved some excess and of course it involved some violence. Their country was invaded. But they did not act like the Iraqi militias who you probably get all hot over, or the Taliban, or any other number of barbaric forces. They instead defended their country against their much larger neighbour and did so with surprising humanity. People like you are despicable. All weepy and raw over your own, mostly self-caused, “misfortunes”, resentful that no one takes you seriously and then prissy and judgemental over the imperfect manner in which others handle real serious problems. You’re marinated in your own grievances and not worth the air you breathe. Get a grip. No one listens to you because no one wants to be like you. Your wretched misery surrounds your every word. You are the beginning and the end of your own humiliation, so blather on about TikTok and disrespect and provocations all you want. You just look bitter and frail and stupid.

“Big Serge” is the person who was writing that “it is a super smart ambush by Russia” every time Ukraine re-conquered large swathes of its territory. The man is a moron.

The Russian offensive was tried and it has failed. Confirmed destructions of Russian equipment demonstrate this. Kofman is right and has probably been the best and most measured voice on Ukraine throughout.

I would like to suggest an alternative to all these theories

Big Serge was a proponent of the various “feint” theories and various Russian false retreat but actually ambush theories. When he suggests an alternative, it means he is making up pro-Putin fan fiction.

At the moment, Russia has the initiative across the front.

Russia has been conducting a failed offensive for two months, while Ukraine builds its forces for its own advance and attrits the Russian force. You can call this ‘the initiative” if you like…I suppose. But the last two Ukrainian offensives were great successes, while Russia hasn’t had anything that can respectably be called a success since 7 months ago and even that was a prelude to disaster for them, as they spent their professional force achieving it.

Ukraine’s reserves are in a tenuous state right

Not true.

As a sort of metaphor for this, there are already rumors that some of Ukraine’s new Leopard tanks will be sent into combat around Bakhmut rather than held in reserve for a future offensive.

I can’t read any more. I’ve never seen such a bizarre attempt to grasp at straws. As a ‘metaphor” there are “rumours” of something that would be circumstantial evidence at best for his theory.

The man is an idiot. He has a track record of idiocy. Little different from Baghdad Bob.

I agree that Ukraine should be sent everything it needs to finish this war as quickly as possible. That is in everyone’s interests, including the Russians. I even still believe that Biden could just tell Putin that “enough is enough” and for him to f*ck off home, but I accept that my belief is based on much less information and understanding than that of Biden’s advisers. Still, Russia is achieving nothing but inflicting misery on Ukraine and losing a generation of their own soldiers. They should just f*ck off home and absolute c*nts like Big Serge can f*ck off with their fan fiction “theorising” too.

He’s literally supporting Russia in a war of aggression. He needs late life therapy to make meaning of himself, not political grievance obsessions.

According to Hope Not Hate, racism of all sorts has been increasing every single day, week, month and year for decades, even as I basically never encounter it. Their alternate universe must make for wonderful fantasy material for National Front types.

The issue is likely to be more about political mobilisation irl, where there seem to be higher barriers than have existed for a long time (I am thinking about the UK here, I am more familiar with it). Mass membership political parties used to defend and promote counter-narratives to each other, they provided both the necessary information and a ‘meat space’ political community. This is less the case now.

Given that the ease of politically mobilising is higher than ever, the fact that there is much less of it reinforces my point that there is much less demand.

I am not as confident about this in the short to middle term, because demographic change is going to speed up. I can see that overt anti-white racism may fade long term as the numbers of white people decline and their disproportionate power as a group fades, it will no longer serve a purpose. And, after their power and status is reduced, racism will be less advisable for Euro whites.

You’re seeing it in all such cynical terms. People don’t want to be racist because, absent starvation and privation, people want to be kinder than that. This has led to suboptimal outcomes for the most successful countries with what appears to be the most effective genetic inheritances, except that it really is the result of people’s choices.

I was in Belarus in the early 2010s, what in the West would be seen as casual racism or remnant folk beliefs about Jews were present. It seems it was because the government didn’t take the issue that seriously.

It wouldn’t matter if the government took it seriously or not in the UK. People would no longer tolerate such a thing. They don’t want it and they don’t like it, which is why the government takes it seriously. There might be isolated cases of some people liking it and the government oppressing them, but that’s only because the vast majority of people dislike it, especially the most successful, intelligent, decent and law-abiding.

Sure, Macgregor was predicting a big Russian winter offensive, as were the Ukrainians in the MSM, and it hasn’t yet happened, so he has a little egg on his face.

There was a Russian offensive. It lasted for 2 months. They suffered tremendous casualties. For example, there is a video of them losing 30 armoured vehicles in a single attack on Vuhledar, but their gains were measured in metres and their gains were measured in metres and hamlets, rather than hundreds of miles and cities.

The point is that MacGregor and every other attention-seeking loser for Putin has been predicting the total collapse of the Ukrainian military since day 1 and predicting it for tomorrow,, but the opposite has happened. The Ukrainian military has continued to strengthen. They histrionic individuals are not just wrong, they are completely utterly upside down wrong. Yet you could pretending otherwise, why?

And are you finally now willing to admit that America obviously destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines?

Nord Stream 2 is functioning. There are also other pipelines from Russia to Europe that function. Only Nord Stream 1 was inoperable. The very same pipeline that Russia had clos d under false pretences for the months preceding the explosion. What motivation did America have to go and blow up the pipelines almost exactly in accordance with Russia’s wishes?

That assessment is based on what exactly? His impressive successes on the field of battle?

This isn’t the age of Napoleon. Serious modern militaries are huge bureaucracies, and the relevant impressive skills stem from that. It isn’t glorious in the way that the past was, but it is effective, and why the US could waltz through Iraq in 5 weeks, on the other side of the world, and Russia can’t even take Bakhmut in a year, right on their border.

Nah, come on, just because the Russians lie a lot and use some facts to justify unjustifiable actions of their own, one doesn’t have to become totally mendacious. Things like the PM gloating over Donbass children hiding in cellars aren’t what most people would associate with being peaceful, democratic etc., nor do certain influential political subcultures in Ukraine fit that description.

There you are again, equivocating between murderous huge invasions and mean words taken out of context. How do you not die of utter self-humiliation?

Would have been invaded even earlier, if the process for NATO accession had gone ahead in 2008 or 2014. Russia under Putin (and probably most other possible leaders) was never going to tolerate this, would have just led to an earlier “preventive” war.

If Russia had attacked NATO, their invasion forces would have been immediately destroyed on the border.

Yeah, too bad Russia has got those things called nuclear weapons. But I’m sure it’s all bluff, what could possibly go wrong in calling it.

You’re still trying to argue that states with nukes are less likely to threaten and use them if they get their way by threatening them, than if they don’t.

That isn’t a legal question, it’s how the Russian military and security establishment views the matter. And there can’t be much doubt that for them Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet are non-negotiable core interests.

They said the exact same as regards Kherson and there was actually more logic to it.

At a time when Russia’s future was uncertain due to the recent coup and in the hope of substantial autonomy within Ukraine. Which wasn’t achieved, with the consequence of serious constitutional crises regarding Crimean separatism already in the 1990s.
I’m tired now and not going to look up the details (easily researchable), but why do militant Westerners like you always have to resort to such transparently dishonest pseudo-arguments? You’ve got nothing better on offer?

You apply very different standards to the different sides. You’re bizarre.

Obviously not that.

Instead it is because his every prediction about the course of the war and geopolitics was absolutely one hundred percent wrong.

Meanwhile, someone like Bill Odom, the three-star general who’d run the NSA for Ronald Reagan, remained honest and therefore was blacklisted from all of the media.

There’s no American out there of Odom’s stature shilling for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. You think Odom would be doing a Ritter? Shilling for Russia to continue in a catastrophe that makes Iraq look like the 38 minute long Anglo-Zanzibar war?

No, the Odom here is Russian and this is him:

The chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, retired General-Colonel Leonid Ivashov, published an appeal on his organization’s website on Jan. 31 to “the President and Citizens of the Russian Federation.” The sharply worded missive, issued on behalf of the organization, ends with the words: “We, Russia’s officers, demand that the President of the Russian Federation reject the criminal policy of provoking a war in which Russia would be alone against the united forces of the West… and retire.”

An absolutely spot on prediction from before the war and one that Russia would be far better off for having heeded.

https://www.justsecurity.org/80149/retired-russian-generals-criticize-putin-over-ukraine-renew-call-for-his-resignation/

It’s quite remarkable how so many of the same people who fell for the Iraq War story haven’t learned anything and are now falling for the Ukraine War story.

You are not only cheerleading for a war of aggression immeasurably more catastrophic than Iraq, but you’re cheerleading for a foreign country prosecuting it. You learned all of the wrong lessons from Iraq and now make even the most deranged neocon look moderate and peaceable.

He doesn’t even acknowledge the major risks of Crimea’s “liberation” leading to a direct NATO-Russia war, quite possibly a nuclear one

You think Russia has anything like the capability to start a war with NATO? They don’t even have the capability to defeat Ukraine.

As for a nuclear standoff, you’ve been obsessing over this all along, and using it to basically argue that Ukraine should surrender. Your attitude has done more to increase the future likelihood of nuclear war than any other. Hodges most certainly addresses this. Giving into nuclear blackmail does not make nuclear war less likely. It makes it more likely.

The idea that a nuclear power can defend its territory with nuclear weapons is established but Crimea is not Russia’s territory. Any more than Kherson, which they claimed in exactly the same nonsense process, and notice how Ukraine took it back and Russia, rather than use nukes, had to suck it up and have its propaganda bots go out to celebrate that as a great victory?

Russia war, quite possibly a nuclear one. Western support for such an enterprise would be seen as an attempt to deprive Russia of her Black Sea Fleet and thereby permanently cripple her as a great power

Russia’s Black Sea fleet cannot even leave the Black Sea. That is a current fact and one which they have no capability to change. Furthermore, they have other Black Sea coastline on which they could maintain their fleet.

And even if by some miracle Ukraine does “liberate” Crimea without catastrophe, there’s the minor question of what Ukraine will do with the hundreds of thousands of Russians there who have zero interest in living in a Ukrainian national state.

They voted for it in the only reliable election. The one held at the fall of the USSR. The 103% or whatever result Russia got clearly wasn’t reliable. As for expulsion, I sincerely hope that it doesn’t happen, but supporting the invasion of your country does often endnuo with expulsion, if any actually did klmuch support it. Let’s hope that Russia’s reparation payments are enough to buy those people off.

If they really are even close to as diehard Russian as Russian propaganda, the same propaganda that claimed immense support in Kherson and was found to be completely wrong, leads you to believe.

Anyway, having seen about 50 minutes of this video, somewhat shocked that this drivel is supposed to be respected analysis, coming from a former senior general at that. It’s probably true that Ritter and MacGregor are essentially propagandists and grifters who tell disenchanted, “pro-Russian” Westerners what they want to hear. Hodges is fulfilling the same role for the NAFO crowd.

Your equivocation between the two is a result of a lot of things, none of them include anything positive. I mentioned the style and you can’t even see how someone who expresses basic doubt and uncertainty is more credible than the Ritter “I am absolutely confident” act.

I am glad that you’re not in charge of Germany and that people like Pistorius don’t have the sort of neurotic housefrau attitude that seeps out of your comments.

I know this is isn’t kind, but it is true.

Rather than deciding Hodges isn’t credible because he doesn’t fit your priors of what a credible expert on this would sound like, you probably need to re-calibrate your idea of what such a person would sound like and base your idea around him. Michael Kofman is an even better option, as he is more careful to manage his image as his career depends on it, but Hodges is an excellent General and more expert that the slew of attention-whores that roll out in bombast for Russia

You also missed a lot of the key points, while getting outraged. For example, Hodges made the fundamental point that the key ground for Ukraine is Crimea. At the very least, it forces Russia to agree to peace to get it back or not have to humiliatingly surrender it, and Ukraine is certainly capable of getting to that point.

You didn’t understand that point because you don’t even have the basic knowledge to understand why key ground/key terrain is specific terminology. I guess your ignorance is why you can’t tell the difference between grifters and Hodges. You might as well be commenting on quantum physics, while thinking you have a clue as to what you’re talking about.

The thing about war is that you always need to be considering what your actions achieve. For example, fighting for Bakhmut doesn’t achieve much of anything for Russia. The only way they can force a surrender on Ukraine is to take Kyiv, and Bakhmut is 22 times further from Bakhmut than Bakhmut is from where they started. In other words, it does get them substantially closer to victory.

Meanwhile, for Ukraine, advancing into Donbas doesn’t get them closer either. In fact, it just gets them closer to better supplied and defended Russian lines. Thereby pitching Ukrainian weakness against Russian strength.

However Crimea can be cut off and, in its isolation, can force Putin into serious negotiations. Your neurotic self, so prone to fall in love with psychotic grifters as they balance you out, will probably enjoy the fact that the most likely result of Ukraine successfully isolating Crimea, is that Putin makes some dumb threats, but immediately sues for peace, in order to not have to surrender Crimea and even, maybe, gets to keep it, or at least Sebastopol.

There is no other way to end this war, except perhaps multiple years of attrition until someone puts a bullet in Putin’s head. Or the West tells Russia it’ll intervene as it has had enough of the pointless bloodshed. Putin has made clear that he is not negotiation capable. Having invaded the country twice in ten years, he has also shown he cannot be trusted. He was literally denying that he ever would, or had, even a few days before. And if the Ukrainian government surrenders, there’ll be occupation and a gruesome wars that will continue for generations, or until the resistance wins, all with an endless supply of weapons from Poland and the Baltics.

Now I get, as a neurotic who falls in love with psychotic grifters, you want to make some argument whereby everyone else must be the model of reasonableness and restraint so as to accommodate the grifters, but they’re won’t be that. That doesn’t work. The West kept Ukraine out of NATO, so Ukraine got invaded, twice. The West de facto let Russia have Crimea, so Putin invaded the rest of Ukraine. The West never threatened Russia with anything like invasion, so Russian official proganda regularly talks about nuking the West. There aren’t two equal sides. There’s the side that invaded a peaceful, democratic European country, while saying that they would never do it, and justified it with claims of a war against Satan and Nazis. And that same side held refrenda in territory they didn’t even fully control, claiming that they’d won in landslides, to say they’d officially and lawfully annexed vast swathes of land, and would defend it with nukes. You can have your petty resentments and whine and whinge about not being respected, but have some perspective. The usually catty squabbles over progressives and conservatives are irrelevant compared to Putin bringing back industrial scale war to Europe, and in a war of genuine conquest even. If Putin succeeds, the future will be a lot more bleak than otherwise. Not just for Ukrainians, but for anyone who wants there to be as small a possibility of nuclear threatening, industrial scale wars of conquest on their doorstep again. Steel yourself. Either the escalation happens now from strength, or it happens in the future in weakness. Hodges gets that, because is a consummate professional. Pity you don’t.

He was wrong about the timeline but directionally right. Ukraine subsequently made major advances in Kharkiv and retook the only proper city Russia has taken in Kherson.

Ok, but Ray McGovern is still an ex middle ranker who has vastly over-sold his career success, as well as his integrity, in order to get as much attention as possible, under a thin veneer of moralism, with the underlying reality being far more whorish than a teen girl posting amateur porn.

I appreciate that there are real barriers to a counter-movement, but I can’t help but notice that organising and finding information counter to the narrative has never been easier for the vast majority of people.

As for establishment shutting down the woke, I am sure they will. The excesses of the woke will make this happen, but the direction won’t be so much backward as deleting the more extreme proposals and moving on with the best.

E.g trans kids is going, even if acceptance of non-adherence to sexual stereotypes will stay. And anti-white racism will go, even as open racism against others groups will not come back.

My romantic other went to a fancy high school in Russia in the 2010s. They recently described to me how the students put on a performance on “minorities day” and that particular one was to celebrate Jews. It ended up utilising a giant sack with a Dollar on it. No one thought this was weird. This isn’t something that modern people, removed from starvation and privation, will ever want en masse.

You really can’t see how you’re an even more ludicrous version of the neocons who justified invading Iraq with overblown claims of WMDs?

You’re missing your link. But good post. This is what moderation and sanity sound like. Rather than Ritter or MacGregor’s second rate bombast and blowhardism.

The invasion of Iraq was bad for America. The invasion of Ukraine is catastrophic for Russia. If you can recognise the first, without being able to recognise the second, you have some serious cognitive blindspots. Probably best to use your perception to investigate those.

You wish you could even be within breathing distance of Ann Coulter.

Stefan Molyneux was an organic youtube star, with nearly a million subscribers, but they cancelled him for talking about IQ and race, even though he was a libertarian, and had somewhat environmentalist views when it comes to parenting and about good ideas and arguments winning.

As far as I’m concerned, Stefan Molyneux is a literal honorary angel. You’ll get no antipathy towards him from me.

AFAIK, Contrapoints has tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue, and is promoted by the algorithm, and the mainstream press which are obviously vastly biased. At the very least, it is definitely not a level playing field.

While ideas like Molyneux’s have had it much harder than those like Contrapoints’, there are a lot of other ideas out there that failed to succeed and didn’t have it hard.

Furthermore, the fact is that Molyneux is basically one of a kind, while Contrapoints is one of many. Molyneux was therefore a huge fish in a small pond, but Contrapoints is one of many big fish in an ocean.

And my argument is that the ocean’s vastness is because the ideas are naturally appealing to very many, and that ignoring this fact, or blaming some conspiracy, is pathetic and cowardly. It also means that you never learn from the ideas of those you oppose because you never have to see the value in them, which is just totally self-defeating.

Yes, you’re right. The same people would be whining about Russian rights. The same people would be decalring that it is not in their interests to help the Baltics. The same people would be ominously talking up nuclear annihilation. The same people would be eulogising Russian military prowess. The same people would be saying Putin was provoked. The same people would be blaming America. The same people would be demonising local resistance. The same people would be disingenuously claiming that the locals were the ones that stopped negotiations.

And yet the same people say it would never happen. Even though they are the same people, minus those who could admit being wrong and change their mind, who argued that Russia would not invade Ukraine.

Here is a classic Tweet from one of these same people the day Russia invaded, just after he said they’d never do it and it was all American lies:

By contrast, someone like Macgregor is very well connected in military circles, both with regard to the Pentagon and NATO, and he claims that his casualty figures come from Western inside sources. Maybe he’s correct or maybe he isn’t, but he comes across as quite reasonable and rational, even though he predicted a big Russian winter offensive that didn’t happen. Others who also have a strong military/intelligence background like Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, and Larry Johnson seem to generally say similar things. Maybe they’re correct or maybe they’re not, but they seem reasonably credible sources, better than analyzing Ukrainian propaganda-Tweets.

Makes sense. Why not trust twice-convicted paedophile, who has been wrong about everything for a year, Ritter, and was a junior Officer in the military, over someone like General Ben Hodges, who commanded US forces in Europe and who has been mostly right for a year?

Yes, I know, you’re going to say that Ben Hodges has reasons to lie, as with all of the other experts who have actually been right, but Ritter has no reason to lie, nor his handful of fellow travellers who have been wrong about everything, because no one ever has loved attention, money and general notoriety, not been deluded and/or embittered and vindictive in late middle age. Literally no one. Therefore they must be right, despite having only been wrong for a year, when they also must have been right. I mean, see how absolutely certain a and confident they are! Nothing says must be right more than absolute certainty and confidence!

Russia is obviously absolutely destroying the Ukrainian military, which is why they mobilised, retreated from Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkhiv, among other places, and is stuck fighting for Bakhmut, which is a 20 minute drive from where they began the war a year ago. Nothing says “success” and could easily destroy NATO as being unable to successfully project power more than 30kms from their de facto border.

I’m ok with that viewpoint even if I disagree. I just can’t stand this cliché whereby most of the dissidents hate and disdain everything about who we are and our countries (meaning white people) yet pretend that their hate and disdain is elsewhere, and not dripping out of every assumption and paragraph that they write.

It reminds me of a particularly poisonous individual whom I know, who is always accusing perfect strangers of hating her, looking down on her and having no respect for her, but of course that is really how she feels about herself. She has literally no way of conceiving her own agency and therefore is constantly putting the blame on others for her decisions, and even creating elaborate conspiracy theories whereby everyone is making sure she looks like an idiot and it is not her fault at all. It is the pure pathology.

What fking SMO are you following to write such ridiculous nonsense? Russia annihilated Ukronazis in Chernigov, Sumy, Kiev, Nikolaev, Donetsk, Kharkov, Zaporizhia and Kherson.

Russia annihilated the “Ukronazis” in all of those places, which is why there are no Russians there anymore and a lot of “Ukronazis.”

I don’t think a dour, straight Slav can adequately replace a flamboyant, gay Jew in such a theatrical role. It’s like trying to replace Freddy Mercury as frontman of Queen with Brian May.

Careful, you’re starting to sound like Medvedev.

My definition of Satanic is darkness, as in absent the light of consciousness. Medvedev’s is just whatever he is too afraid to be conscious of. In other words, what he leaves in darkness by fear.

Can you give some examples?
Regarding the trans ideology, imo there are both financial interests and powerful lobbyist structures of the LGBTQ (or whatever it now is) movement behind it.
Don’t find it convincing that this is some spontaneous creation of teenagers, they may be one of the main targets of this ideology (and especially vulnerable), but they didn’t create it.

Billions of ideas are created and restated all of the time. But what catches on is organic.

A good example of a highly influential person, whose career took off before mainstream attention, is “Contra-Points.” He began making YouTube videos back in 2008 and honestly, some of them are pretty good.

This one on envy is excellent. Notice that it is almost 2 hours long, on a serious and philosophical topic, and not even something ignored by the mainstream, but instead outcompeted the mainstream, yet has 5 million views. What other home-produced film on something so untopical, and without any controversy, can get so many people to love it?

And yes, he is a tranny and a fairly convincing one, which you might find repulsive, but no one is watching such a long form video, on such a non-topical and dry topic, without being a big fan.

And just to add, Contra-Points has meet-up groups and WhatsApp groups, that non-tranny supporters organically started all over the world, including countries where English language media traditionally has little foothold. These are almost solely run by the young, and most often by teens. This stuff was not taught to them at school, instead they are demanding it from their teachers.

There are good and solid reasons, inherent to the ideas, for this stuff to be popular. I obviously know a lot of people who love this stuff. They are much more than averagely intelligent and often much more than averagely thoughtful. I’d also say that they are actually much more than averagely decent in their personal interactions.

As I pointed out in my comment and have repeatedly stated, McGovern ran the CIA’s Soviet Policy group and also served as the President’s Morning Briefer on intelligence matters, which are obviously very significant positions.

No, McGovern sometimes helped prepare the PDB. The PDB is actually produced by the Director of National Intelligence, which is a position McGovern, as just an analyst, never came close to. Furthermore, the number of people who contributed in such a way as he did is likely huge. This is how vast bureaucracies work, and how every cog inflates their own contributions. Do you take every self-promoting attention seeker on the internet’s claims of previous greatness as naively?

Sachs became Harvard’s youngest tenured professor in history and for decades has been considered one of the world’s highest-ranking academics, serving on all sorts of international boards and commissions. Meanwhile, Chotiner is just some ignorant Neocon shill, paid to insult and attack figures vastly above him in rank.

And yet Sachs comes off like a complete moron in that interview. Is he unwell? He had no answer whatsoever to the following, as it is a perfect indictment of his split worldview.

You’ve been a very eloquent critic of some of the worst aspects of American foreign policy. Let’s take the Iraq War as one example. You’ve described everything Russia has done during the past twelve years—bombing civilians in Syria, bombing civilians in Ukraine, annexing Crimea, supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine—as essentially forced on them. If people described the Iraq War that way, by removing responsibility from the United States, it would make me cringe. Every Russian action you’ve mentioned is just described as the result of American behavior.

The way RW media report on this stuff is backwards. Wokeness rose from the bottom-up. Yes, there were academic precursors, but there are billions of academic ideas that no one ends up caring about.

The trends weren’t cooked up in shadowy rooms. They were instead responded to by the most opportunistic, like any trend. RWers should learn from this. Usually “cui buono” is whomever responds faster and better. Like any successful entrepreneur. Bezoa didn’t conspire to make online shopping better than real shopping. Instead, everything was in place for it to be and he took advantage, to his tremendous personal gain.

Unsurprisingly, a bunch of old and out of touch men on the RW internet don’t know this. The biggest Woke names all made it huge organically via social media before the mainstream media even noticed. Places like the NYT then went super-Woke to try and play catch up and also went from failing and facing bankruptcy to having never been so profitable. These are facts, conceding them doesn’t make Wokeness right.

The temptation to explain away the success of ideas you oppose without understanding why those ideas are actually incredibly appealing is something that is actually Satanic.

It is funny but I think it misses a crucial point about “non-binary.”

Non-binary means nothing more than that you sometimes relate to things traditionally associated with the other sex, while also relating to some of the things associated with your own sex.

This means that if you like babies and puppies and the news and history, then you’re non-binary.

In other words, it means absolutely everyone, as no one is such a ridiculous stereotype, and therefore it means nothing.

So to rephrase:

Young guy is chatting up a girl he likes.
She says:
– I am non binary…
He wants to impress her and says:
– Well, I identify as a person who drinks water, breathes air and sleeps regularly.

Yes, I probably don’t have a career as a professional comedian but everyone would benefit from understanding this. Stupid narcissistic teenager claims to special identity and, rather than freaking out, wise older person should basically just reply “you’re normal”, rather than playing into their frame and hyping up the extraordinariness of it. Basically “go achieve something if you want to be interesting rather than just coming up with bizarre names for being ordinary.”

No one in Russia is religious. It isn’t even normal to celebrate Christmas there. Not on the Russian day, nor 25th December. Though New Year’s is a big party. But you’re probably one of these people who thinks Satan has a side gig as a dance choreographer for the Grammies…

Old man writes of his hatred for his people and country for probably a litany of personal reasons, but gives it an implausible disguise of supposed morals, politics and altruism.

Not a new genre of article.

“I don’t hate us, they hate us” says hateful old man spewing hatred for us.

You couldn’t satirise it.

What sort of threat to their core sense of identity must be being wrong on these issues be that they can’t even watch a clip of someone talking without one of their defence mechanisms kicking in and completely and surreally distorting their perception?

The twice convicted child groomer Scott Ritter? The man who has been wrong every single day of this war from when he announced Russia’s total victory and conquest of Ukraine a few hours in?

Or the Jeffrey Sachs from this interview? A man who comes across like a total lunatic?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/jeffrey-sachss-great-power-politics

Or the Ray McGovern who was a mid-ranking CIA analyst, of which there have been tens of thousands if not more, who has made a lucrative post-CIA career as a talking head for foreign propaganda outlets like RT?

Of the millions of ex-employees of the US security state, a substantial number of whom are embittered old men with a deep desire for attention because that’s probable, can the Russians not find better shills?

Hi Ivashka,

You offered to bet me on whether Belarus would join the war soon, because you thought they were about to.

Any updates on your thoughts, now that they haven’t done so and some time has passed?

I did see that Lukashenko has ordered the creation of a large citizen militia to “learn from the lessons of Ukraine.” But that seems to be learning from the Ukrainians on how to secure independence, not the other way around. Odd.

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-209/#comment-5813399

Russia is fighting NATO and losing even though NATO hasn’t yet turned up.

What topic? Your pathetic, incoherent and often hysterical whining that some newspaper somewhere said mean words ahout your icons?

It is a FACT that Russia hasn’t even deployed its real troops yet? They just mobilised for fun? All of the videos of their exploded equipment is fake? All newspaper reports are lies? Putin just really loves being unable to take Bakhmut, a small town on the beginning line of contact, for a year, and can’t be bothered to start trying?

But he’ll start trying real soon!

Ok Mumblebrain. At least you know yourself.

If African countries adopted a 1 child policy tomorrow, and aimed to have half of women not even do that, resulting in a 0.5 child policy. Global child poverty would be finished by 2040, probably forever. Resulting in the end of mass poverty even with current technology.

Were you doing the Russian planning before the war and imagining the following:

1. The Zelensky government won’t stay and fight

2. The Ukrainian military won’t maintain discipline

3. Germany won’t cancel the authentication of NS2

4. The developed democracies won’t provide financial support to Ukraine

5. The developed democracies won’t provide arms to Ukraine

6. The developed democracies won’t provide missiles to Ukraine

7. The developed democracies won’t provide tanks to Ukraine

8. The developed democracies won’t wean themselves off Russian gas

9. The developed democracies won’t freeze Russian assets

10. The developed democracies won’t do proper sanctions

Ultimately, Europe won’t put up with China arming an invasion of Europe and will bring the rest of the developed world, and their respective spheres, in on sanctions against China if they were to try. This would be the end of the CCP.

Putin may be able to justify Russian suffering over Ukraine to Russians for now, but China’s export-based economy is not something Chinese want to sacrifice in order to try and sustain a failed Russian war of aggression. Thats stupid.

As for Russia bombing NATO countries, lol. NATO countries, especially those bordering Ukraine, would absolute love any excuse whatsoever to strike at the incredibly vulnerable Russian military currently dying outside of Bakhmut. Probably nothing would make the Polish government happier than obliterating a few Russian BGs as a safe and protected response to Russian aggression entering its territory.

I’m sorry you feel you’ve been personally demonised, but the critical words directed at Orban and Modi by liberal newspapers are not the same thing. Your struggle is not their struggle and Putin murdering Ukrainians is not your vindication. Grow up.

And please don’t take this for a lack of sympathy. I know very well what it is like to be demonised and even horribly scapegoated. I am not dismissing that experience. I am just separating it out from some irrelevant geopolitical narrative.

I understand that view. It is basically true, but I see it as a sort of passive cynicism which I’m not fond of.

I’m not sure you can label profound faith as “passive cynicism”. You might call my ability to communicate with all sorts of unusual phenomena an imaginative delusion, but it isn’t cynical.

Helping people use their minds more actively and creatively would be far more amazing than AI. AI is a hollow dead end as far as humanity is concerned.

AI will do this. Not just by diminishing mundane concerns, which will allow people to explore spiritual areas more easily, but also by improving knowledge, and as a tool for more acute thought.

Humans are still stuck on our own little planet. It would be a travesty if we create a lame utilitarian AI which ultimately wipes us out before we can meet other species and try to live through those adventures.

Yes, humans getting wiped out would be bad, but that’s not inherent to AI, just terrible implementation of AI. And AI will diminish our likelihood of getting wiped out in other ways, including enabling space travel, combatting deadly disease and unpredictable events like comet impacts.

Maybe AI is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Civilizations evolve far enough to create an AI. The AI grows and wipes out the creators before they achieve star travel. The AI eventually stagnates and ultimately dies because it is fundamentally not creative. So the Universe is full of dead young civilizations cut down in their early stages.

It is possible, but there are many other possible answers, including the vastness of space, our inability to understand signs of other life and all sorts of disasters, nevermind the idea that maybe humans really are very special.

9 out of 10 comments you write sound like they from a genocidal lunatic, of the sort that would make the Hutus blush. And this near impossible physiological effect is not something you want. Can you at least pretend to be sane when you write? You can maintain all your delusions about this awful war, which you cheerlead for, but you don’t need to constantly make everyone think that you celebrate the deaths of innocent Ukrainians. It does nobody any favours.

Sy Hersh displays his complete ignorance/extreme bias and claims that the Russians are yet to out any of their main forces in. That’s an insane claim, not far off from arguing the whole thing is fake. Does he have dementia?

Sy Hersh displays his complete ignorance/extreme bias and claims that the Russians are yet to out any of their main forces in. That’s an insane claim, not far off from arguing the whole thing is fake. Does he have dementia?

These are interesting points, and so are your points about an AI looking for s soul, but I think, once you insert this type of spiritual thinking, you have to allow for the fact that it is all fine and just as much a part of nature as us.

I agree with your general sentiment, but I don’t guarantee that AGI won’t end up with a soul. I also think that AI is an excellent tool which will improve our lives, as all tools do on balance, and don’t think there is any conspiracy to turn us into zombies.

The harm from AI will outweigh the benefits. Unlike earlier automation it will displace most smarter people as well as the less intelligent.

Zero scarcity in high IQ production would be great. That just makes everything else much more valuable in terms of market price, which would be good for ordinary people.

AI is for people who cannot or do not want to think and is specifically intended to replace the human mind. Thinking is mankind’s reason for existence so AI is intrinsically anti-humanity

You’ll still be able to what you believe is you thinking.