[Razengan]

> their relationship to power

The word "power" is so ironic in human cultures:

It's the people with the guns (and muscles) that have the literal physical power. They could shoot the aristocrats dead if they wanted to.

The aristocrats' "power" is make-believe like the rest of their papers and numbers: The various psychological barriers which dissuade the gun-bearers from ever reaching the "want to" part.

[rcxdude]

Which is why power is much more complex than brute force. Sheer physical or military power is not the be-all and end-all, just a facet of the total picture (and in fact, social creatures that humans are, even just adversarial aspects of power are a subset of power).

[Razengan]

It's like that image of a horse tied to a little plastic chair and not daring to move away

[kergonath]

> It's the people with the guns (and muscles) that have the literal physical power. They could shoot the aristocrats dead if they wanted to.

What matters is not raw power, it’s balance. The power of one guy with guns is kept in check by the power of other guys with guns who stand to benefit from the status quo. The aristocracy’s game is to play with this balance to make sure that no other rival force emerges. They do not need any actual physical power themselves to play it.

[vlan0]

This is true up until it isn't. Their security is through obscurity. Being able to deflect the masses. Manipulating the balance, if you will. But they are not special. They are still unprotected sacks of flesh. And we've recently seen just how vulnerable they are. If that desire spread, you will see more.

[kergonath]

> This is true up until it isn't.

Indeed. Then, there’s a revolution and heads start rolling. But again, this does not happen when power disappears; it happens when the balance changes, e.g. when a significant chunk of the army sides with a part of the people.

> Their security is through obscurity

Not at all. They can be very blatant about it. Look at Iran for example. Or Russia. Everyone knows who controls what, there is nothing obscure about it.

[SJC_Hacker]

“You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half”

- someone

[jjk166]

People with guns don't stand much of a chance against people with armies. Sure armies can turn on an individual, but that just means that particular individual has lost power, and that power has been transferred to whatever new individual commands the loyalty of the many. It's not imaginary, it's emergent.

[esseph]

People vastly overestimate the power of armies.

Trump has gotten shot once, almost twice.

Shinzo Abe got murked by some pipes from the hardware store.

[jjk166]

And how are the people who shot these politicians doing now? How about the US and Japanese governments? Clearly shooting a politician doesn't mean either that you gain their power or that the power structure they led evaporates.

[esseph]

My point is that an Army can't protect someone that people really want to die.

[niyikiza]

Reminds me of the riddle[1][2] from Game of Thrones / A Clash of Kings:

Lord Varys: Three great men sit in a room: a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives, who dies? Tyrion Lannister: Depends on the sellsword. Lord Varys: Does it? He has neither crown, nor gold, nor favor with the gods. Tyrion Lannister: He has a sword, the power of life and death. Lord Varys: But if it's swordsmen who rule, why do we pretend kings hold all the power? When Ned Stark lost his head, who was truly responsible? Joffrey? The executioner? Or something else? Tyrion Lannister: I've decided I don't like riddles. [pause] Lord Varys: Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070135/characters/nm0384152/ [2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys...

[Razengan]

Obligatory Fuck Season 8

[niyikiza]

I SAY AYE.

[IsTom]

Historically aristocracy was the military class. Nowadays in authoritarian societies it looks like it's mostly matter of time before military takes the lead.

[dctoedt]

> Nowadays in authoritarian societies it looks like it's mostly matter of time before military takes the lead.

See, e.g., Iran's IGRC. Counterexamples: China, Russia — and the U.S.?

[xphos]

China dervies a ton of authority and Legitmacy from the PLA (peoples liberation army) and Russia is run by from Inteligence service members of the KGB low level ones to be sure but I don't see how China and Russia are counter examples. The US isn't their yet we will see if the backslide happens in the next two years but I think its of a different qualia than we see in the "typical" Authorithian State.

Ironically I was watching Nuremberg last not and is is schocking how close some of the leaders of this country are to characters like Hermann Göring, or Hitler himself in talking points. They are certainly populists but the language they used is MGGA (make german great again) so to speak. And factually that were not particular that good at it either most of Germans recovery is really due to the liberal government that pass laws that built the Autobahn were laws not by the Nazi party. They certain jumped on them and accelerate them but effective governence is not really for the populist

[QuarterReptile]

In fact, the current administration, not headed by someone from the military (and VP has military credibility but not leadership) is not at all aligned to the military except in that their base appreciates the imprimatur of honorable military service. In fact, Trump 1 was in many ways a huge refutation to Trump of the idea that the military guys were leaders he could count on. Their brain-trust positions had more left-alignment than he maybe imagined. His administration, in 2025, fired high-ranking officers in a way that suggested he entered with the reverse conclusion: not military leaders as high-competence straight-shooters, but as all being suspect for having risen unstoppably in a system pervaded by partisan platitudes and shibboleths. Fortunately, the administration didn't take the Soviet approach of purging all those under suspicion.

They just finally had to fire their SecNav because reality butted heads with their ideological conclusion was that business experience was more conducive to military success. Unfortunately for their very-much-not-military-led plan, SecNav probably needs a bit more user experience from time in Navy leadership to successfully work within that labrythine bureaucracy.

[argomo]

A military coup in the U.S. is imaginable, which probably explains some of the top brass purges (until recently, where it's probably an attempt to deflect blame for the massive Iran fuck up).

Putin did it better; he kept the military weak and aggressively managed the risk via the FSB.

[simonh]

I don't think it's plausible, but an authoritarian president invoking emergency powers and deploying military and paramilitary forces to exert control on the streets is, on the basis it's already going on at a limited scale. All it takes is for that scale to gradually dial up over time until the frog's cooked.

The problem you have is these elected kings. Not just any king, pretty specifically the majority of the powers enjoyed by George III in the 1790s. The fact that you still have this, unreformed over 200 years later and still think that somehow your constitutional system is modern, is a matter for despair. Get yourselves a proper parliamentary system, with maybe a head of state as a figurehead.

[cucumber3732842]

>The problem you have is these elected kings. Not just any king, pretty specifically the majority of the powers enjoyed by George III in the 1790s. The fact that you still have this, unreformed over 200 years later and still think that somehow your constitutional system is modern, is a matter for despair. Get yourselves a proper parliamentary system, with maybe a head of state as a figurehead.

What a poorly thought out and questionably motivated take. It will no doubt be well received here.

In any case, reconstructing out legislature to copy european stuff isn't gonna change anything if the legislature still sees fit to vest so much power in the executive.

[simonh]

My point is precisely that the US system is substantially a copy of European stuff. It had some significant innovations for it's time of course, but it's really showing it's age. Meanwhile Parliamentary systems have significantly reformed and further innovated since.

[mwigdahl]

Your main point is valid, but I'd argue it's less the power of the President and more the two-party system and the weakness of Congress that is the root of many American governance problems. Executive power has grown in the vacuum of Congressional impotence.

As far as reforms, we need more to be sure, but there's at least the 22nd Amendment, formalizing the two-term tradition that Washington initiated and FDR abrogated into a hard limit, that means Trump can't legally keep power past 2028.

[QuarterReptile]

I think, despite all the furor whipped up and attempts by high-ranking officials to foment a coup, the military is actually very unlikely to disobey Presidential orders; this is based on my frequent interactions with military officers over the last ten years. Do you perceive some other, more likely, coup scenario?

[alistairSH]

A coup from the same military that happily deployed foot soldiers into American cities to perform law enforcement duties they were not trained to perform? And is happily killing boat-people in the Caribbean? And ran a covert operation to kidnap a foreign head of state? And ran another covert operation to assassinate political leaders in another sovereign state and are now bombing that same state into rubble for no publicly disclosed reason?

Yeah, no coup is happening here. Our military is built around civilian control via the White House. That ain't changing any time soon. Ignoring the various uses of force above, when the generals were called before Hegseth to bend the knee, all but one of them did.

[vlan0]

Exactly this. They live in houses with glass windows. We could take this world any time we choose.

[pavas]

Chill out brother. Life's good.

[vlan0]

That is exactly the type of pacificity that plays into their hand. Life is good and bad at the same time. It is important to hold those two at the same time.

[pavas]

I donno for me life's just good. I'm living that Asterix lifestyle lol.

[lyu07282]

Don't worry nobody here said anything even remotely political, it wouldn't even occur to them, so your status quo is safe.

[pavas]

Ah, "status quo", that's a Latin phrase! I'm particularly fond of "carpe diem": seize the carp!

[scottyah]

But then you'd have to live in it, and it sounds like you'd have a world where people with nice things don't live long

[vlan0]

Nah, nothing wrong with nice things. But if those nice things only exist because someone else on the planet had to suffer....

[jubilanti]

But the people almost never do, and that reason is power.

[mrguyorama]

The reason is gambling.

The vast majority of people don't want to take the bet of a tiny chance of doubling their lot in life for the downside risk of literally being tortured and dying and probably ruining the life of any loved ones.

Most people aren't degenerate gamblers.

The workaround is organization. With sufficient organization, you can start to drag the tiny chance to a slightly bigger chance, and slightly reduce the downside risk maybe.

Some parts of American society are absurdly bad at organizing, and basically gave up 60 years ago.

[bandofthehawk]

Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

[Razengan]

Man, fuck season 8 tho

[scottyah]

The pen is mightier than the sword.