Bruce Wayne : Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he's after.
Alfred Pennyworth : With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that you don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
BW : So why steal them?
AP : Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
So, how do you deal with such man?
BW : The bandit, in the forest in Burma, did you catch him?
I always found this ironic. The answer to someone who wants to watch things burn is to, in effect, give them what they want and burn things down, on a smaller scale though, I guess?
Which gives them what they want either way-- you either don't fight and let them burn the world, or burn it for them. I suppose a 3rd option would be to change their mind, but that seems a long shot.
On the surface it seems pretty simple- the end of history utopianism of the '90s has mutated to the end is near dystopianism. There are no shortage of statistics explaining why the standard of living for the average American has dropped off, sometimes sharply, compared to that era. Hence accelerationism is now king.
For a good analysis for why both the far right and the far left are unhappy (more so than in other ages, at least), there's this article on neoreaction, which became vogue to talk about in 2013 before the present dominant political trends: "Shedding Light on the Dark Enlightenment" by Rick Searle at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies (https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202)
I think the verbiage is misleading and inflammatory. "Need For Chaos" can more reasonably be understood as "desire for change" when the individuals see no actual path for that change to occur.
Calling it a "need for chaos" further alienates those whose very alienation is the cause of the phenomenon on display. Better to use more neutral language that doesn't inflame the population being observed or bias those doing the observation into further perpetuating an "us vs them" mentality.
I think this is pretty on point. You have a lot of disaffected people who want something to change but don't see a reasonable path for the type of change they want. Instead they just make decisions towards the most amount of change, even if it isn't good change.
Think of them as being lost in a forest trying to find a path out and constantly looking for higher ground to climb to see if they can see a path out of the forest. They never know if the hill they are climbing is going to provide the view they need, but they still climb hoping it does.
I think "us vs them" mentality is the point here. To demonstrate "them" are so irrational, so deplorable, so beyond any redemption and lacking of any sense and virtue that their alienation and complete disregard for their needs, voices and concerns is justified and is the right thing to do. If somebody just wants the world to burn, you don't discuss a compromise with them that would be acceptable to both sides, you put them in jail or mental hospital. The author doesn't want to find common neutral ground with the deplorable Trump voters. He wants to convince us they are so crazy that "normal" people should just shun them, avoid them, treat them not as rational people disagreeing on politics, but as people afflicted with NFC condition that just are that way, and that's it.
> 40 percent concurred with the thought that "When it comes to our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking 'just let them all burn' "; and 40 percent also agreed that "we cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over."
Hard not to sympathize with this perspective when:
- The people running the country lie us into an unending, ruinous war with help from the establishment media, and no one is held to account.
- The people running the country demolish the economy with unsustainable debt-driven speculation, and no one is held to account.
- The people running the country openly associate with a convicted trafficker of children, who conveniently dies in prison before naming any names and while the cameras were "inoperable" and the guards asleep and his cellmate transferred out at just the right moment, and (just wait for it!) no one is held to account.
"Let them all burn" may not be the right answer, but at the very highest levels our political and social institutions are rotten to the core.
You can look to the left and look to the right
But you will live in danger tonight
When the enemy comes he will never be heard
He'll blow your mind and not say a word.
Blinding lights--flashing colors
Sleepless nights...
If the man with the power
Can't keep it under control
Some heads are gonna roll
...
The power-mad freaks who are ruling the earth
Will show how little they think you're worth
With animal lust they'll devour your life
And slice your word to bits like a knife
One last day burning hell fire
You're blown away...
If the man with the power
Can't keep it under control
Some heads are gonna roll
...
Yet almost everyone keeps on voting for the same people to run the country. They mostly believe keeping the enemy other party out of power is more important than all of the other problems combined. Either that or they don't vote which is itself a vote for the establishment.
There is no alternative, other than not voting. The political parties in the USA are not the issue, since they are both playing for the same team (big banks and corporations). It is unfathomable to many that Obama (either through naivety or deliberate will) let Wall St off the hook. That was a moment that defined the decade.
The system is corrupt because the checks and balances that used to be there were dismantled (or slowly erroded in some cases).
The non-stop materialism-consumerism and lust for money that defined USA after WW2 (especially in the 80s-90s) can be seen as a way to control-appease (or distract) the population at large so that the power players could continue their orgy uninterrupted. But even consumerism and cheap entertainment is now coming apart. You can see it everywhere around you. The masses are reaching a boiling point and fireworks are to be expected.
No, that's just a standard Marxist lens on things. Nobody in Wall St was let off the hook because incompetence is not illegal, nor should it be. The masses aren't about to engage in counter capitalist revolution any more than they were 100 years ago. Big banks and corporations aren't a "team" that people play for, they're just ways in which resource allocation is organised. There is no control-appeasement, whatever that's meant to be. Just people trying to rule systems far too large and complicated for them, mostly at the behest of voters, and failing at it.
Even for the ones who didn't do anything illegal, they were certainly "let off the hook" in the sense that the massive bonuses they were paid for economically destructive decisions were never clawed back, and in fact the same fundamental structures of "no skin in the game" and "privatized gains, socialized losses" were preserved and even strengthened in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In the most egregious instance of this, firms which would have been nothing but smoking holes in the ground without public capital injections and backstops were allowed to pay out colossal bonuses to the same people who got them into that mess in the first place.
However, it's also certainly not the case that there were no criminal acts of fraud committed by Wall St execs during the 2000s bubble. Dick Fuld's Repo 105 scam is a great example: https://www.epsilontheory.com/repo-105/
You're completely right about the problem of socialized losses, but that's a system level problem rather than a problem of individuals - it would exist even if everyone in the financial industry was completely replaced. And it's ultimately a problem created by governments, which implicitly promise to bail out bankrupt institutions if they're "too big to fail" (where how big that is, isn't defined anywhere).
I haven't heard about Dick Fuld, I'll read your link, thanks.
I think Trump is a particularly skilled con artist, who manages to sell himself as the tableflipper candidate even though he is as much a creature of the establishment as all the rest of them. So I don't think it's true that people are voting for continuity even though (so far) that's been the practical result.
As another counterpoint, Bernie Sanders consistently attracts a large share of the vote while explicitly advocating for socialism. It's very possible he would have been the Democratic candidate for POTUS in 2016 if the DNC had not kneecapped his campaign.
And like Bernie, another relatively non-establishment candidate that could have given people something actually new to vote for seems to have now been taken care of, once again with some fancy footwork (cherry picking of polls this time) by the DNC.
It's pretty hard to not vote for the same people when anyone that doesn't fit the proper mold isn't handicapped through the nomination process.
I'd post some supporting links, but for every article I could post supporting my thesis someone could easily post one that denies it. Articles and discussions on such topics are rarely substantially based on facts, the whole thing is largely propaganda.
The best commentary I've heard on the subject of nomination shenanigans in both parties has been from Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History fame) on his lesser known podcast "Common Sense with Dan Carlin". He knows a thing or two about history and politics, and he is fairly disgusted with the entire political system in the US.
I didn't see anything in the parent comment about assassination, but given the topic: Yes, when governments were effectively embodied by one single person invested with something approaching absolute power, bumping off that person would change the situation. Of course it often plunged the kingdom into some type of crisis until the succession was decided and a new monarch/king/whatever was installed. That's still the case in some countries, like what happened in Iraq w/ Saddam Hussein (yes, it was more complicated than that, I know) But in other countries that have some flavor of democracy, bumping off the person in charge is not really a path to changing the social/economic order. The power structures go way beyond a single individual, and continuity is fairly well preserved.
I think it's implied that zero percent of normal people want to see society "burned to the ground"
Edit: after re-reading that part of the article I'm not sure anymore. I can't tell if the questions were phrased to imply a serious destructive desire or if "burn it down" was passable as "I'm discontent with life". Might have to read the paper itself to clarify.
Yeah, I didn't find this article all that informative. What does that mean, anyway? It could mean that our current society is irredeemably bad (not unthinkable if you're not a middle to upper class white person) and that only a revolution can create a better society. Or it could be just pure nihilism. (I recall "guys we memed a president into existence" being the top comment on /r/thedonald's celebration post after the election.)
It also seems so open to interpretation, what it means to burn society to the ground, and how (if at all, which I suspect not) are they controlling for hyperbole and whimsy?
Edit: actually, I won't delete my comment, but I really don't want to be the guy that skims a * Vice article and comments like he's thought of something the author's of the underlying haven't. I remain sceptical, but acknowledge that 'whaddoiknow'.
In Germany it used to be that the "protest parties" (usually on the far right) would get perhaps 10 % of the vote. Currently, AfD is at 20 - 25 % in the polls.
I've had my share of NFC at times. I was an idealistic Young Pioneer (not that different from Boy Scout). But I got disillusioned, and became an idealistic hippie immigrant.
Then I got disillusioned again, and went punk/metal. Megadeth's "Addicted To Chaos" was my favorite song for a while. Plus Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, Judas Priest, Turbonegro, Marilyn Manson, etc. But still, I did a PhD and played in academica for a while, so I was arguably just posing.
Now, it's not so much that I have NFC. I'm just not at all optimistic about the future. But not like it was during the 60s-80s, when nuclear holocaust seemed all too likely. Now it's mostly the slow slide into an ~unlivable climate. And all the social breakdowns that will come with that. And given that I'll be dead, it's not such a big deal, personally.
Exactly. Trump is one of these people, which is why they love him so much. That he is in a position of such great responsibility is incredibly dangerous.
He’s not actually one of these people so much as he pretends to be, but I agree he is dangerous.
For me it’s mostly the way that he openly lies, even about recorded things he’s previously said, is disturbing and that he takes the already toxic political rhetoric of the last decade to the next level.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel now, 2.5 years in? If you knew in November 2016 what you know now, would you still have voted for him? Do you plan to vote for him in 2020? Not trying to troll or start a political flamewar here, I'm genuinely interested, especially as it's pretty rare that a HNer will "admit" to being a Trump voter.
The thing that always gets me is that even though Trump presented himself as this tear-down-the-establishment, drain-the-swamp kind of guy, it always seemed pretty likely that he'd just replace the political establishment with people in the business/finance establishment, which is essentially the same thing to many/most of the people who this platform resonated with. And, well... that's exactly what he's done, aside from the other expected outcomes of inflaming racial/gender/etc. divides; ignorantly bumbling his way through economic, trade, and foreign policy; and lying his way through every day in office. What is it about that which still lends him support? Is it still just the chaos? Because he's not actually fixing anything for most of his supporters; the elites are still just as elite as ever, and at best it's status quo, but in many cases things are worse.
Put another way: it just seems unlikely to me that all the "burn it to the ground" supporters expected or are happy with the fact that burning it all down also causes them more suffering, too; more suffering than the establishment has been hit with. And yet, here we are.
I normally don't admit to it, but I've become less fearful of the backlash lately.
Current plan is to vote for him in 2020. Worst case I will abstain from voting for President.
The economy is still on fire as much as it's ever been in the midwest. Can't complain there.
The trade war is unfortunate, but the alternative is to bend over and take it from China. Everyone agrees that they don't play fair. So the options are to do something about it, or to just let them keep on. My family has a manufacturing background, so all the offshoring is sort of personal.
The racial crap isn't nearly as much of an issue as the media likes to make it. It makes for good ratings, though.
---
Basically I'm hedging my bets on at worst I think the government should be robust enough not to be brought down by one bad leader. And if it is, then maybe we deserved to fall. Plus from my perspective he's not doing all that bad.
"The racial crap" appears to be crap media mongering primarily to those who haven't been on the receiving end of the fire hose (metaphorically or literally) some time in the past few decades. I'm sure it makes for good ratings, and the media makes the most of it, but that doesn't mean it's any less of an issue than portrayed.
> If you knew in November 2016 what you know now, would you still have voted for him? Do you plan to vote for him in 2020?
I'll throw my hat in the ring and say yes to both questions, under the circumstances.
> ignorantly bumbling his way through economic, trade, and foreign policy
I disagree with this characterization, but can certainly understand how someone could come to this conclusion.
> Put another way: it just seems unlikely to me that all the "burn it to the ground" supporters expected or are happy with the fact that burning it all down also causes them more suffering, too; more suffering than the establishment has been hit with. And yet, here we are.
I suspect the way they evaluate the situation is dramatically different than yours. There are a handful of people who are actually looking into what's behind the seemingly paradoxical (and coordinated) behavior of a large number of people around the world rather than just wagging their finger, but unfortunately hardly anyone seems interested in what they've found.
Ok I understand that conservatives view morality differently¹ , and factor in a wider range of concerns², fine.
But I don't see how voting for Trump advances conservative voters any further in shifting the moral framework to one they would prefer. I see trump mostly as amoral if anything.
Or is the point, as the study suggests, to burn down the system? To dismantle morally offensive programs/legislation? Am I missing something?
1: I.e. that it's not just about how we treat each other, but also supposed to act as an organizing principle for society.
2: loyalty, respect for authority purity
The main thing Trump has been doing as a favor to conservatives is heavily loading the court benches with conservative justices. That will have a long-term impact.
I think the mistake liberals make when looking at Trump, is they think he must be viewed by his supporters the same way they looked at Obama.
Obama is someone they looked up to on a personal, moral level.
Trump is, as you said, amoral. He goes where the political winds and his instinct take him.
I think people would feel much more at ease at least with the whole unstable, incompetent leader thing if they bothered to read Art of the Deal (written in 1987), in which he lays out how he views the world basically word for word in line with what he said during his 2016 campaign.
He may be unorthodox, but he is consistent.
Would I want to be his friend? Probably not. But that's not the role he applied for.
Trump is far less "burn it to the ground" than his fans like to imagine. He's a friend to Wall Street, K Street, Raytheon Acres and the good old Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
No, I think his supporters see the dog whistle too, but in reverse: the "wink" to establishment as the dog-whistle with the message to them as the "real" one. I don't think either interpretation is strictly correct. I don't think President Trump himself has a "canonical" interpretation of these things-- his sentiment is changeable, not ideological or even political.
Didn't see this Michael Moore video [1] until after the election, but it pretty well describes why I voted for him. I'm doing pretty well, but I have a blue collar background, and the people I grew up around weren't.
Didn't really figure he'd win, but my dad had died earlier in the year, and I figured he would have voted Trump, so I did it for him.
Wasn't really a "burn it to the ground" thing in a literal sense. Basically what the end of the video clip says: "It's going to be a big Fuck You to the establishment. And it will feel good."
And did the spirit behind that gesture last? He then went and teamed up with the same Republican politicians he pledged to be different from, and gave the establishment a big tax cut.
And why not? The entire political process is kabuki interspersed with conversations with important donors and lobbying groups that actually establish policy.
Nihilism isn't the answer, but neither is demanding a particular kind of we're-all-professionals kabuki without any real change. Flipping over tables is at least something.
Funnily enough, just a few months before the Anglosphere dove into the current populist wave, people like Charles Stross were talking about a future of beige bureaucratic dictatorships dominated by financialization and security states:
For those unfamiliar with Stross & his site, the site name is not "anti-pope" as in "against the catholic pope". It was a drunken mistake a few decades ago-- the site name was supposed to be "autopope" (specifically autopope.uucp)
Otherwise, just like his highly entertaining books, he often offers up incisive commentary on society. Whether or not you always agree with it, it always makes for an interesting read.
The tribalism is mostly grist for entertainment media, though. NC bathrooms are national news.
Who's writing the bills, the budgets and the RFPs?
Politics are fairly decoupled from actual policy at this point, the policy is marching ahead with your beige boxes while the politics express a desire to change that but no ability to do so.
Unless you're currently resident in DR Congo or North Korea, you have a lot to lose. Rock bottom is far rockier than most people can imagine. Civilization is immensely precious and remarkably fragile.
No, it isn't. It literally isn't anything. It wasn't even anything when Jesus did it, because he did it, and then the people he did it to had him nailed to a tree and they kept on doing business.
... and then a movement was started in his name which resulted in big changes in how society worked, or at least changes in how the leaders had to act in public.
... and that movement was integrated into the establishment, first through Rome, then European and American imperialism, but the establishment continues to this day to be just as venal and corrupt as ever.
Bruce Wayne : Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he's after.
Alfred Pennyworth : With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that you don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
BW : So why steal them?
AP : Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
So, how do you deal with such man?
BW : The bandit, in the forest in Burma, did you catch him?
AP : Yes.
BW : How?
AP : We burned the forest down.