Tag: history

Ambling towards Armageddon (The Saving Democracy Edition)

I’ve been thinking about the war in Ukraine, obviously a proxy war between the US, NATO, and Russia. The constant, nauseating references to World War II and Putin as the new Hitler are disturbing and misguided. 

Putin is undoubtedly a ruthless, murdering autocrat, if not an outright dictator, balanced somewhat by Russian aristocrats and oligarchs. His regime is dangerous and to be feared, if not respected. But they’re not the Nazi regime.

It’s foolish to imply that if we don’t stop Putin now, he’ll do what Hitler did. It is important to note that the Allies didn’t go after Hitler because of the Holocaust — we might have known through intelligence, that there was a systemic annihilation of Jews and other peoples but that wasn’t the reason why England and the US went to war with Germany.  A fact that is overlooked.  We were at war because the Nazis challenged the Anglophile world order.

The Nuremberg laws were inspired by American race laws. Blacks in the US were treated with such indifference and hatred that I would argue we were one bad leader away from developing our own flavor of a Holocaust. The revelations of the Holocaust’s horrors held a mirror to post-war America and its treatment of blacks, which I believe enabled the civil rights movement to gain the traction it had lacked for decades. Without it, the holocaust, I believe progress in race relations would have been little to none.

We must be wary of the myths our leaders peddle with little to no context.  Especially when they are used to justify foreign entanglements.

World War II was an extension of World War I.  A war started in large part as an arrogant power grab by impotent leaders sacrificing the lives of millions of young men and civilians, with the net outcome of some changes in borders. The lack of consequences for any of the men responsible led to an even more horrific World War II.

Today’s leaders hide behind that false moral superiority. Leading us to a potential nuclear confrontation – an existential threat to humanity that we aren’t even upset about, preoccupied instead by petty issues like the “misuse” of pronouns.

Is preventing Putin’s potential tyranny over a small population worth risking all of humanity? If so, then why are we not doing the same for Haiti, the Congo, or South Africa?  Do some people count more than others?  We do nothing for these and many other countries but are willing to risk Armageddon for a conflict and people we barely understand – essentially for nothing.

Posted on by George

OSR | Civilizations Operating System

Photo by Spencer Davis on Pexels.com

In Nail Ferguson’s 2012 book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, he tackles why the West succeeded, to the degree it has and has come to dominate the globe? After a detailed outline of how the European powers compared to those of the Ottoman and Chinese empires 500 years ago — not well. Ferguson goes on to detail how, through circumstances of violence, poor decisions, and empirical overreach, the well-established Chinese and Ottoman empires created the right conditions for the rise of Western Civilization and its 400 years of dominance. He describes 6 particular developments that separated the West from the rest, which in keeping with the times he describes as “Killer Apps.” (This will make more sense in a few). Here are Ferguson’s civilizations killer apps:

  • Competition
  • Science
  • Property Rights
  • Medicine
  • Consumer Society
  • Work Ethic

I’ve read reviews of this work dismissing its oversimplification on one end and its Western-centric position on the other. I think the former missed the point of the exercise while the latter likely didn’t read the text because Ferguson’s conclusions are far from flattering for where the West is heading.

I enjoyed his framing the social developments that gave rise to Western Civilization as Killer Apps. In doing so, Ferguson illustrates how these can and have been downloaded by the rising powers — China for one.

Ferguson spends a good deal on the colonial period and the horrors they incurred on native peoples and also highlighted some of the benefits that came out of said periods, particularly around medicine. 

Below is a TED Talk by Ferguson where is discusses his killer apps. He is a master presenter, and his summary of the apps is compelling and informative.

Ferguson does not shy away from the horrors delivered by Europeans as they marched and conquered the world. These horrors were critical in establishing and maintaining their dominance. But Ferguson did fail to identify an operating system for his apps. I would call it OSR, the operating system of ruthlessness. Without ruthlessness, empires cannot retain their hold for too long, and the rest of the killer apps would not have had an operating system on which to run.

Posted on by George