In full agreement. Connecting real life policy to anything is tricky and 'observable effects' are not always a reliable way to establish causation. Re Mid East the US prime interest was access to oil and pushing the UK out (40s through 60s), the petrodollar (70s onwards) and, now it is preventing the integration of the region into the R…
In full agreement. Connecting real life policy to anything is tricky and 'observable effects' are not always a reliable way to establish causation. Re Mid East the US prime interest was access to oil and pushing the UK out (40s through 60s), the petrodollar (70s onwards) and, now it is preventing the integration of the region into the Russia/China bloc. Weapons sales (involving kickbacks all-round) comes second, everything else is a distant third and this third is a very useful cover for the mischiefs undertaken to achieve primary and secondary goals. Public policy is typically a matrushka doll....something is always concealed.
The current dynamic in US politics is fascinating: I suspect that there are multiple agendas working themselves out, but my starting point is that the US is all about the US and the players in US foreign policy are supremely parochial (also pig-ignorant, both the Mid East and Russia are Rorschach blots on a map to most). The China/America relationship has me stupefied, it is beyond Byzantine.
Politics in the imperial capital have always been, and will always be, a labyrinth of competing foreign and domestic interests. Once a hegemon has been established, the low-energy solution to power is to worm your way in with bribery, corruption, lobbying, blackmail, and the like. To render the tangled rat's nest even somewhat legible, it's necessary to identify as many actors as possible ... and an actor has a big advantage if you're not allowed to publicly discuss its existence.
Comparative differences can be more meaningful than absolute properties. For instance, most blacks are fairly law-abiding, nice people. Doesn't change that their population, for whatever reason, has much higher rates of violent crime than any other.
Likewise, obviously the overwhelming majority of Jews aren't financiers or neocons. They're regular folks. That doesn't change that they were wildly overrepresented in communist groups in the early 20th century, or are wildly overrepresented in high level government positions currently.
The outliers people complain about aren't generally the kind of outliers that don't follow stereotypes; they're the exemplars, the ones who are extreme examples of the stereotype.
Re: Jews, absolutely. Those dynamics have upsides and downs, but if the downsides can't be acknowledged by the wider society, they'll have a tendency to proliferate rather than be discouraged.
Absolutely. That's why the Spartans we're reluctant to fight: they knew that battle taught their enemies, and they wanted to keep their advantage on the field. Learn from everyone, especially those getting the best of you.
In full agreement. Connecting real life policy to anything is tricky and 'observable effects' are not always a reliable way to establish causation. Re Mid East the US prime interest was access to oil and pushing the UK out (40s through 60s), the petrodollar (70s onwards) and, now it is preventing the integration of the region into the Russia/China bloc. Weapons sales (involving kickbacks all-round) comes second, everything else is a distant third and this third is a very useful cover for the mischiefs undertaken to achieve primary and secondary goals. Public policy is typically a matrushka doll....something is always concealed.
The current dynamic in US politics is fascinating: I suspect that there are multiple agendas working themselves out, but my starting point is that the US is all about the US and the players in US foreign policy are supremely parochial (also pig-ignorant, both the Mid East and Russia are Rorschach blots on a map to most). The China/America relationship has me stupefied, it is beyond Byzantine.
Politics in the imperial capital have always been, and will always be, a labyrinth of competing foreign and domestic interests. Once a hegemon has been established, the low-energy solution to power is to worm your way in with bribery, corruption, lobbying, blackmail, and the like. To render the tangled rat's nest even somewhat legible, it's necessary to identify as many actors as possible ... and an actor has a big advantage if you're not allowed to publicly discuss its existence.
Outliers don't invalidate group-level properties. They are, however, what keeps the world from getting boring and predictable.
Comparative differences can be more meaningful than absolute properties. For instance, most blacks are fairly law-abiding, nice people. Doesn't change that their population, for whatever reason, has much higher rates of violent crime than any other.
Likewise, obviously the overwhelming majority of Jews aren't financiers or neocons. They're regular folks. That doesn't change that they were wildly overrepresented in communist groups in the early 20th century, or are wildly overrepresented in high level government positions currently.
The outliers people complain about aren't generally the kind of outliers that don't follow stereotypes; they're the exemplars, the ones who are extreme examples of the stereotype.
Re: Jews, absolutely. Those dynamics have upsides and downs, but if the downsides can't be acknowledged by the wider society, they'll have a tendency to proliferate rather than be discouraged.
Absolutely. That's why the Spartans we're reluctant to fight: they knew that battle taught their enemies, and they wanted to keep their advantage on the field. Learn from everyone, especially those getting the best of you.