I care, thanks. You sold it well, too – haven’t heard about the religious angle, interesting.

I don’t think ‘decadent’ is the right word, though. It just means lazy and indulgent. The west is greedy for evil. The west exults corruption, perversity, and depravity.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141538/alexander-lukin/what-the-kremlin-is-thinking

I read this at the counter of a new diner that opened at the end of my street. Waitress was a Russian in her 20s. Probably a 6 by Moscow standards but a 12 by suburban DC standards. The aesthetics gap between the FSU and the US cannot be overstated.

Thede-spasm? Broken out in hives? I rather like him, at least according to what he says in this interview. (He might be motte-bailing like mad.) He wants Russians to win in conflicts with America. He thinks Russians who take American aid and comfort and use it against Russia should be treated as traitors. I find these things very forgivable given he’s a Russian. Further, he’s not strictly a philosopher, but some sort of Russian style of intellectual, so I find his philosophical failings similarly unimportant.

By contrast, Posner was revealed as a revolting revenant of a man. Sophistry and narcissism. Narcissistry and Sophism. Christ, let the man speak! He didn’t force is way onto the set, you invited him! Of course, it’s not that surprising, since he voluntarily took a job in showbiz. (Read as; ‘voluntarily stuck his hand in a wood-chipper.’ Or perhaps his brain.)

It’s downright pleasant to have a enemy who isn’t trying to convince me to lay down and die for my own good. Annihilation! Open calls for censorship! Fantastic. When asked to name names, Dugin in fact named names.

With an enemy like Dugin, there’s clear victory and defeat conditions. Once defeated, he’s safe, as he will honourably admit defeat and abide by the terms.

An enemy like Posner is a zombie. The infection must be cleansed with a scorched earth policy. Anyone even mildly suspected of having been exposed must be treated as an active combatant. The only peace possible is the Roman kind. This involvement of the innocent is exactly why zombies should never be granted quarter. Every activist should be treated as if they’re proposing mass murder, because that is what it will take to save anything good from them. Or: when someone proposes total war, the rational, proportionate response is to immediately declare total war on them.

Thinking about how zombies can’t be reasoned with, I suspect enemies like Dugin are a problem for anti-appeasement theory as well. He can be reasoned with, which means under certain conditions he can be appeased.

I’m entirely in concurrence with your sense of what this would mean.

Had you posted about the Szabo-is-Satoshi theory already? I’ve arrived at this very late, but it’s quite fascinating stuff. It also leads me to speculate on CY’s motivations behind his Urbit project; after all the two clearly have several overlapping areas of competition going (for instance Neocameralism vs Juristopia), and if Szabo IS Satoshi he must have made out like a bandit not a thief, making millions (potentially billions) while enduring a real world influence and legacy potentially as important as anyone this century. Faced with that no wonder CY has been too busy with code for regular updates…

https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-nick-szabo/

https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/occams-razor-who-is-most-likely-to-be-satoshi-nakamoto/